Sam Wolken

I’m Sam Wolken, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania jointly in Political Science and Communication. I received a Master’s degree in Statistics and Data Science from The Wharton School in 2023.

I use computational tools to study the information environment. I consider how market forces shape news production and, in turn, media’s role in influencing how Americans think about and engage with politics and government. My dissertation focuses on local television news: what’s on it, who watches it, and whether viewers change their consumption habits when partisan commentary shows up in their local newscasts. I also study how social scientists can integrate AI tools into their research reliably and effectively, such as generative AI for text annotation.