Benjamin Leigh

Biography

B. Tyler Leigh is a researcher with the Rooney Center for American Democracy. His research seeks to understand how and why Americans develop (anti-) democratic attitudes using a mix of panel and experimental methods. In particular, he focuses on the role of media in the development of (anti-)democratic attitudes. Currently, he is working on a book-length project showing that Americans are becoming less supportive of free expression because we believe social media provides too much freedom to express whatever one wants. Leigh is also using AI and computational social science methods to examine the effects of quasi-random variation in local news content on voter turnout and polarization between the 2020 and 2024 elections. Leigh’s other projects include a series of panel studies documenting population-level net effects of social media use on political attitudes and experimental studies aiming to map the limits of public support for freedom of expression. He is currently completing Ph.D.’s in Political Science and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.