Two political science alumni address emergent issues in society

Two alumni, Brendan Nyhan and Rajiv Golla, have written on topics that highlight the many ways that studying political science can compliment professional writing.  

Brendan Nyhan, who graduated with a PhD in 2009, is a contributing writer for NYTimes Upshot blog and recently co-authored the first large data analysis of the estimates and effects of fake news exposure during the 2016 presidential election.  In a NYTimes piece about Nyhan's research, Benedict Carey writes, "While the research can’t settle the question of whether misinformation was pivotal in the 2016 election, the findings give the public and researchers the first solid guide to asking how its influence may have played out."

Rajiv Golla, who graduated with a BA in 2017, has written freelance for Reuters, Roads and Kingdoms, and the Christian Science Monitor.  Last October, while a student at Duke, he was hired by Vice Motherboard to report on the recent Flat Earth International Conference.  While interviewing proponents of flat earth cosmology, he was constantly probing for the politically relevant force of the doctrine. "The flat earth movement is a look into a post-truth future," Golla writes, "and a canary in the coal mine of our political discourse. And this conference was the first time the growing community would leave their online forums and come aboveground."