Dror Walter
Assistant Professor Communication- Education
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, Communication
M.A., University of Pennsylvania, Communication
M.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Political Communication
B.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Philosophy, Political Science and Economics
- Specializations
Political Communication, Computational Social Science, Health Misinformation, Political Extremism
- Biography
Dr. Walter is an assistant professor of digital communication at Georgia State University, a member of the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative, and a distinguished fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. His research is centered on the intersection between traditional media effects theories and novel computational social science methods. His research addresses the ways computational methods such as network analysis, unsupervised machine learning, and supervised machine learning can aid in the analysis of online political and health related content. His current studies focus on two interrelated contexts: extremist forms of political discussion (focusing on political misinformation), and health misinformation. Among his recent research projects in this domain are: Exploring the relationship between political and health misinformation in political extremist discourse, exploring the impact of foreign actors’ online interference in US politics, the relationship between far-right extremist discourse and anti-vaccination attitudes and arguments, and conceptualizations of vaccine hesitancy. Additionally, his past and current work is also situated within the larger field of political communication with studies on the conceptualization, measurement and impact of thematic diversity, strategies of political candidates on social media, impact of news framing on candidates’ electoral success, and inductive approaches to nation branding. From a methodological point of view, his research has focused on developing unsupervised machine learning approaches for frame analysis of traditional mass media and social media content (ANTMN), the measurement and impact of thematic diversity in discourse, and methods of identification of discursive communities in social networks.
- Publications
- Stafford, M., Himelboim, I., Walter, D. & Ophir, Y. (2022). The Evolution of the Advertising Discipline Through Four Decades A Machine Learning Scope Analysis of Themes, Topics and Methods. International Journal of Advertising. DOI: 10.1080/02650487.2022.2128005
- Walter, D., Ophir, Y., Pruden, M. & Golan G. (2022) Watching the Whole World: The Media Framing of Foreign Countries in U.S. News and its Antecedents. Journalism Studies, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2022.2137838.
- Liu, A. K., Ophir, Y., Walter, D., & Himelboim, I. (2022) Hashtag Activism in a Politicized Pandemic: Framing the Campaign to Include Taiwan in the Efforts to Combat COVID-19. New Media and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221099173
- Walter, D., Ophir, Y., Lokmanoglu, A. D., & Pruden, M. L. (2022). Vaccine discourse in white nationalist online communication: A mixed-methods computational approach. Social Science and Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114859
- Jamieson, K. H., Levendusky, M., Pasek, J., Holbert, L., Renninger, A., Ophir, Y., Walter, D., Hardy, B., Kenski, K., Winneg, K., Romer, D. (2022) Democracy Amid Crisis. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/democracy-amid-crises-9780197644690
- Ophir, Y., Pruden, M. L., Walter, D., Lokmanoglu, A. D., Tebaldi, C., & Wang, R. (2022). Weaponizing Reproductive Rights: A Mixed-Method Analysis of White Nationalists' Discussion of Abortions Online. Information, Communication, and Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2077654
- Ophir, Y., Walter, N., Walter, D., Velho, R. M., Lokmanoglu, A. D., Pruden, M. L., & Andrews, E. A. (2022). Vaccine Hesitancy Under the Magnifying Glass: A Systematic Review of the Uses and Misuses of an Increasingly Popular Construct. Health Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2054102
- Ophir, Y., Massignan, V., Forde, D. K., Neurohr, M., & Walter, D. (2021). News Media Framing of Social Protests Around Racial Tensions During the Donald Trump Presidency. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211036622
- Ophir, Y., Walter, D., Arnon, D., Lokmanoglu. A., Tizzoni, M., Carota. J., D’Antiga, L., & Nicastro, E. (2021) The Framing of COVID-19 in Italian Media and its Effects on Community Mobility: A Mixed Method Approach. Journal of Health Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2021.1899344
- Walter, D. and Ophir, Y. (2020) Exploring the Relationship between Strategy Framing and Electoral Success: An Analysis of Topic Model Networks Approach. Political Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1858379
- Ophir Y., Walter D. and Marchant E. (Equal Authorship; 2020) A Collaborative Way of Knowing: Bridging Computational Communication Research and Grounded Theory Ethnography. Journal of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa013
- Walter, D., Ophir Y. and Hall-Jamieson, K. (2020) Russian Twitter Accounts and the Partisan Polarization of Vaccine Discourse, 2015-2017. American Journal of Public Health. Published online March 19, 2020. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305564<https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305564>
- Walter, D. and Ophir, Y. (2019) The Elephant and the Bird: Republican Candidates’ Use of Strategy and Issue Framing in Twitter During the 2016 Republican Presidential Primaries. The International Journal of Communication. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/11808
- Walter, D. and Ophir, Y. (2019) News Frame Analysis: An Inductive Mixed-Method Computational Approach. Communication Methods and Measures. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19312458.2019.1639145