Academic Background and Fields of Interest

Lilach Nir (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) holds a dual appointment as tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She specializes in public opinion, mass media effects, and comparative political communication. Prof. Nir is a former Fulbright Fellow, has served on the International Communication Association's Executive Board, and as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Her publications include journal articles on public opinion perceptions, cross-national differences in news exposure and effects, and the contribution of political disagreement to opinion quality.

Her work has won awards from the International Communication Association and the World Association for Public Opinion Research, and has appeared or is currently in press in PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Communication, Communication Theory, and Communication Research.

Publications:

• Soroka, S. N., Fournier, P., Nir, L. (2019). Cross-nationalevidence of a negativity bias in psycho-physiological reactions to news. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States of America. in press.
• Amsalem, E. & Nir, L. (2019) Does interpersonal discussionincrease political knowledge? A meta-analysis. Communication Research, in press.
• Soroka, S. N., Fournier, P., Nir, L. & Hibbing, J. M. (2019). Psychophysiology in the study of political communication: An expository study of individual-level variation in negativity biases. Special Issue: New Approaches to Method and Measurement in the Study of Political Communication Effects. Political Communication 36(2), 288-302.
• Castro-Herrero, L., Nir, L. & Skovsgaard, M. (2018). Bridging gapsin crosscutting media exposure: The role of public service broadcasting. Political Communication 35(4), 542-565.
• Nir, L. (2017). Social representations, news exposure, andknowledge gaps. Social Science Quarterly, 98 (3): 786-803. Special Issue: Lead article
• Tsfati, Y. & Nir, L. (2017). Frames and reasoning: Two pathways from selective exposure to polarization. International Journal of Communication, 11: 301-322.
• Walter, D., Sheafer, T., Nir, L., & Shenhav, S. (2016). Not AllCountries are Created Equal: Foreign Countries Prevalence in US News and Entertainment Media. Mass Communication and Society, 19(2): 522-541.
• Soroka, S., Gidengil, E., Fournier, P., & Nir, L. (2016). DoWomen and Men Respond Differently to Negative News? Politics and Gender, 12 (2): 344-368.
• Miodownik, D., & Nir, L. (2016). Receptivity to Violence inEthnically Divided Societies: A Micro-Level Mechanism of Perceived Horizontal Inequalities. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 39(1): 22-45.
• Hopmann, D. N., Matthes, J., & Nir, L. (2015). Informalpolitical conversation across time and space: Setting the research agenda. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 27 (4): 448-460.
• Nir, L., & McClurg, S. D. (2015). How institutions affectgender gaps in public opinion expression. Public Opinion Quarterly, 79(2), 544-567.
• Horwitz, N. & Nir, L. (2015). How politics-news parallelisminvigorates partisanship strength. International Political Science Review, 36(2), 153-167.

Recent Activities and Awards:

• 2012-13  Visiting Scholar, the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication (on sabbatical leave from HUJI)

• 2011-12 Honorary Fellow, the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication (on sabbatical leave from HUJI)

• 2011 Council of the Second Authority for Television and Radio (public authority that supervises  commercial broadcasting in Israel) annual research funding, academic adviser

• 2010-11  Smart Institute research grant, project: Deliberation in cross-national comparative perspective

• 2008-09  Levy Eshkol Institute research grant, project: Political humor, reasoning, and democratic legitimacy

• 2005-2007 Elected as Golda Meir Fellow of the Social Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem