Andrew Ross

Andrew R. N. Ross is a Doctoral Researcher at the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C). His research interests and PhD project are focused on disinformation on social media, perceptions of public opinion, and (social) media effects.

In 2014, Andrew was awarded a BSc in Applied Psychology from Durham University where he finished in the top 10% of his year group. His dissertation was Highly Commended in the David Kleiman BSc Dissertation Prize.

In 2017, he awarded an MA with Distinction in Politics from the University of East Anglia where his dissertation won the prize for the Best MA Dissertation Prize for School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies. This project was expanded and was later published in New Media and Society.

He joined Loughborough University in 2019 on a fully funded ESRC 1+3 programme. At the end of his first year, he was awarded an MSc with Distinction in Social Science Research. He also won the prize for the highest scoring dissertation across the postgraduate MSc taught programmes in Communication and Media, and Social and Policy Studies.

Andrew’s research is focused on media effects in the hybrid media system. This includes published work on the impact of vox pop tweets on audiences’ perceptions of public opinion, as well as research on the power of embedding political leaders’ tweets in online news. Both of these articles were published in New Media and Society, with the latter being awarded a ‘SAGE choice’ badge and therefore being made open access for free.

He has since collaborated with Andrew Chadwick and Cristian Vaccari on a number of projects, including: a book chapter on public opinion cues in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Political Journalism, and a published article investigating COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

His PhD project will focus on disinformation on social media, perceptions of public opinion, and (social) media effects.

PGR Supervisors: Andrew Chadwick, Cristian Vaccari

• Ross, A. R., Chadwick, A., & Vaccari, C. (2021, in press). Digital media and the proliferation of public opinion cues online: biases and vulnerabilities in the new attention economy. Forthcoming in Morrison, J., Birks, J. and Berry, D. M. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Political Journalism. Routledge.
• Chadwick, A., Kaiser, J., Vaccari, C., Freeman, D., Lambe, S., Loe, B. S., Vanderslott, S., Lewandowsky, S., Conroy, M., Ross, A. R., Innocenti, S., Pollard, A. J., Waitre, F., Larkin, M., Rosebrock, L., Jenner, L., McShane, H., Giubilini, A., Petit, A., & Yu, Ly-Mee (2021, In Press). ‘Online Social Endorsement and Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in the UK.’ Social Media + Society.
• Dumitrescu, D., & Ross, A. R. (2020). Embedding, quoting, or paraphrasing? Investigating the effects of political leaders’ tweets in online news articles: The case of Donald Trump. New Media & Society, 1461444820920881.
• Ross, A. R., & Dumitrescu, D. (2019). ‘Vox Twitterati’: Investigating the effects of social media exemplars in online news articles. New media & society, 21(4), 962-983.