Benjamin Toff
Associate Professor, Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Chapter Member: Minneapolis-St. Paul SSN
Areas of Expertise:
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About Benjamin
Toff's research focuses on the public’s relationship with news, changing information environments, and implications for political engagement. He is most recently co-author of "Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism" (2023, Columbia University Press) and has previously led projects on trust in news, artificial intelligence, local journalism, and public opinion. Toff also serves as Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center which seeks to foster a more vibrant, equitable, and sustainable ecosystem for journalism in his state.
Contributions
Rethinking the Role of Public Opinion Polls in American Democracy
Basic Facts Brief,
Publications
"Teaching an Old Dog New Tweets: Congressional Campaigns and the Political Content of Social Media Messages" (with ), American Political Science Association, July 2014.
Uses an original dataset of 500,000 tweets posted by congressional incumbents and their challengers during the 2012 election to identify a range of partisan, constituent, current event, and campaign-related content, providing insight into the words, ideas, and concepts members use on social media and how they relate to political parties, elections, and other traditional elements of American politics.
"Words That Matter: Twitter and Partisan Polarization" (with ), International Communications Association, April 2014.
Utilizes an automated text analysis tool and the Twitter messages of a sample of 96 partisan media personalities and organizations as well as party leaders and candidates for office to track the degree of their extreme partisan language on in social media.
"Beyond the Party Decides: Modeling the Dynamic Interrelationship between Party Elites, Media Coverage, and Public Opinion during the Invisible Primary", Midwest Political Science Association, March 2014.
Evaluates the degree to which media coverage impacted the pre-election opinion polls during the volatile 2012 Republican presidential nomination contest, using time series statistical analysis to argue that media influenced not only likely voters but the support of elites within the party, often believed to be the determining factor governing a nominee's success.