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Dr Sumitra Badrinathan

Former Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dr Sumitra Badrinathan is a former Postdoctoral Research Fellow fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include studying misinformation, media effects and political behaviour, with a regional focus on India. 

Sumitra’s dissertation evaluates the effectiveness of interventions to combat political misinformation in India and the power of partisanship and motivated reasoning to affect information processing. To shed light on these questions, her work has focused on techniques to fight fake news on WhatsApp and digital literacy trainings to decrease vulnerability to misinformation. Methodologically, Sumitra uses experimental and survey methods to study the relationship between newer forms of media like WhatsApp and their effect on trust in news, polarisation, political participation, and quality of democracy.

Originally from Mumbai, India, Sumitra also holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.