Dr. Sjifra de Leeuw is a postdoctoral researcher in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and research affiliate at the Center for Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) at New York University (NYU). Her current research involves the societal effects of online news consumption – the consumption of dissimilar political views in particular.
Sjifra completed her Ph.D. (2017-2020, Cum Laude / Highest Distinction) entitled The Authoritarian Virus: Between Infection and Immunity. An Empirical Investigation of Authoritarian Framing Effects at the same research group. She holds a Master's degree in Comparative Politics (Summa Cum Laude, 2017), Sociology (Magna Cum Laude, 2017) at the University of Leuven, Belgium, where she has also pursued a Masters in Statistics (provisional Magna Cum Laude). Her master's theses received "best master thesis prizes" awarded by the KU Leuven Faculty of Social Sciences (1st place), the Belgian Society for Sociological Research (3rd place), and Sociology Magazine (2nd place).