Yotam Ophir

PhD

Profile photo of Yotam Ophir.

Yotam Ophir

PhD

Yotam Ophir

PhD

Research Focus

Media effects and persuasion; Misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extremism; Computational social science; Health and science communication; Political communication

Overview Background Publications

Recent Publications


Co-Authored Books

Levendusky, M., Pasek, J., Holbert, L. R., Renninger, A. Ophir, Y., … & Jamieson, K. H. (2022). Democracy amid crises. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780197644706

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

* indicates a supervised graduate student first author

Ophir, Y., Walter, D., Jamieson, P., & Jamieson, K. H. (2023). Factors Assessing Science's Self-Presentation (FASS model) and their Effect on Conservatives' and Liberals' Support for Funding Science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 10.1073/pnas.2213838120

*Lattimer, T., Tenzek, K., & Ophir, Y. (2023). Shouts from the void: A mixed-method analysis surrounding the online chronic illness community, #NEISVoid. Health Communication.

Tenzek, K. E., Lapan, E., Ophir, Y., & Lattimer, T. A. (2023). Staying connected: Alzheimer’s hashtags and opportunities for engagement and overcoming stigma.  Journal of Aging Studies.

*Wang, R., Walter, D., & Ophir, Y. (2023, equal contribution). Not all bots are created equal: The impact of bots classification techniques on identification of discursive behaviors around the COVID-19 vaccine and climate change. Social Science Computer Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439323118847

*Dobmeier, C., Ophir, Y., Walter, D., & Hubner, A. (2023). Mapping the media genome: An unsupervised machine learning analysis of news framing of direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits. Mass Communication & Society.

Walter, D., & Ophir, Y. (2023). Trolls Without Borders: A Comparative Analysis of Six Foreign Countries’ Online Propaganda Campaigns. Human Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqad022

Walter, D., & Ophir, Y. (2023). Conspiracies, misinformation, and resistance to public health measures during COVID-19 in White Nationalist online communication. Vaccine

*Moore, M. M., & Ophir, Y. (2023). Predicting Romantic Comedy Success

From Content. International Journal of Communication.

*Moore, M. M., Green, M. C., Ophir, Y., & Wang, H. (2023). The Effects of Corrective Strategies on Romantic Belief Endorsement. Communication Research.

Ophir, Y., Pruden, M. L., Walter, D., Lokmanoglu, A. D., Tebaldi, C., & Wang, R. (2022). Weaponizing Reproductive Rights: A Mixed-Method Analysis of White Nationalists' Discussion of Abortions Online. Information, Communication, and Society, 26(11), 2186-2211. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2077654

Ophir, Y., Walter, N., Walter, D., Velho, R. M., Lokmanoglu, A. D., Pruden, M. L., & Andrews, E. A. (2022). Vaccine Hesitancy Under the Magnifying Glass: A Systematic Review of the Uses and Misuses of an Increasingly Popular Construct. Health Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2022.2054102

*Liu, A. K., Ophir, Y., Walter, D., & Himelboim, I. (2022). Hashtag Activism in a Politicized Pandemic: Framing the Campaign to Include Taiwan in the Efforts to Combat COVID-19. New Media & Society.

Walter, D., Ophir, Y., Lokmanoglu, A. D., & Pruden, M. L. (2022). Vaccine discourse in white nationalist online communication: A mixed-methods computational approach. Social Science and Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114859

Walter, D., Ophir, Y., Pruden, M., & Golan, G. (2022). Watching the Whole World: The Media Framing of Foreign Countries in U.S. News and its Antecedents. Journalism Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2022.2137838

Stafford, M., Himelboim, I., Walter, D., & Ophir, Y. (2022). The evolution of advertising research through four decades: A computational analysis of themes, topics and methods. International Journal of Advertising, 41(1), DOI: 10.1080/02650487.2022.2128005

*Lattimer, T., & Ophir, Y. (2022). Oppression by omission: An analysis of the #WhereIsTheInterpreter hashtag campaign around COVID-19 on Twitter. Media Culture & Society.

*Lattimer, T., Tenzek, K., Sullivan, S., & Ophir, Y. (2022). Exploring Online Twitter Conversations surrounding National Healthcare Decisions Day and Advance Care Planning from a Socio-Cultural Perspective: A Computational Mixed-Methods Analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Formative Research.

Ophir, Y., Massignan, V., Forde, D. K., Neurohr, M., & Walter, D. (2021). News Media Framing of Social Protests Around Racial Tensions During the Donald Trump Presidency. Journalism, 24(3), 475-493. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211036622

Ophir, Y., Walter, D., Arnon, D., Lokmanoglu, A., Tizzoni, M., Carota, J., D’Antiga, L., & Nicastro, E. (2021). The framing of COVID-19 in Italian Media and its Effects on Community Mobility: A Mixed Method Approach. Journal of Health Communication, 26(3), 161-173. 10.1080/10810730.2021.1899344

Ophir, Y., Jamieson, K. H. (2021). The Effects of Media Narratives about the Failures of Scientists and Science on Beliefs and Support in Funding Science. Public Understanding of Science, 30(8), 1008-1023. 10.1177/09636625211012630

*Moore, M. M., & Ophir, Y. (2021). Big Data Actually: Analyzing the Thematic Content of 200 Romantic Comedies Using Unsupervised Machine Learning. Psychology of Popular Media.

Koru, O., Stecula, D., Lu, H., Ophir, Y., Chan, M. S., Winneg, K., Jamieson, K. H., & Albarracin, D., (2021). The effects of scientific messages and narratives about vaccination. PLOS One.

Ophir, Y., Walter, D., & Marchant, E., (2020). Bridging Computational Communication Research and Grounded Theory Ethnography: A Topic Model Networks Approach. Journal of Communication, 70(3), 472-447. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa013

Ophir, Y., Jamieson, K. H., Romer, D., and Jamieson, P. E. (2020). Counter-acting Pro-Tobacco YouTube Videos: The Effects of Text-based and Counter-Narrative Interventions and the Role of Identification. International Journal of Communication

Walter, D., Ophir, Y., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020). Russian Twitter Accounts and the Partisan Polarization of Vaccine Discourse, 2015-2018. American Journal of Public Health, 110(5), 718-724. 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305564

Walter, D. & Ophir, Y. (2020). Exploring the Relationship between Strategy Framing in News Coverage and Electoral Success: An Analysis of Topic Model Networks Approach. Political Communication.

Yang, Q., Herbert, N., Yang, S., Alber, J., Ophir, Y., Cappella, J. N. (2020). The Role of Information Avoidance in Managing Uncertainty from Conflicting Recommendations about Electronic Cigarettes”. Communication Monographs, 88(3), 263-285. 10.1080/03637751.2020.1809685

Lu, H., APPC 2018-2019 ASK Group*, Winneg, K., Jamieson, K. H., & Albarracin, D. (2020).  Intentions to Seek Information About the Influenza Vaccine: The Role of Informational Subjective Norms, Anticipated and Experienced Affect, and Information Insufficiency Among Vaccinated and Unvaccinated People. Risk Analysis¸ Published Online First, February 20th, 2020. *Member of the APPC group.

Ophir, Y., (2019). The Effects of News Coverage of Epidemics on Public Support and Compliance with CDC– An Experimental Study. Journal of Health Communication, 24(5), 547-558. 10.1080/10810730.2019.1632990

Sangalang, A., Ophir, Y., & Cappella, J. N. (2019). The potential for narratives to correct misinformation. Journal of Communication, 69(3), 298-319. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz014

Walter, D., & Ophir, Y., (2019). News Frame Analysis: An Inductive Mixed-Method Computational Approach. Communication Methods & Measures. 13(4), 248-266. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2019.1639145

Walter, D. & Ophir, Y. (2019). The Elephant and the Bird: Republican Candidates’ Use of Strategy and Issue Framing in Twitter during the 2016 Republican Presidential Primaries. International Journal of Communication.

Ophir, Y., & Jamieson, K. H. (2018). The Effects of Zika Virus Risk Coverage on Familiarity, Knowledge and Behavior in the U.S. Health Communication, 35(1), 35-45. 10.1080/10410236.2018.1536958.

Ophir, Y. (2018). The Coverage of Epidemics in American Newspapers through the Lens of the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Framework. Health Security, 16(3), 147-157.

Ophir, Y., & Jamieson, K. H. (2018). Intentions to Use a Novel Zika Vaccine: The Effects of Misbeliefs about the MMR Vaccine and Perceptions about Zika. Journal of Public Health, 40(4), e531-e537. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdy042

Brennan, E., Maloney, E. K., Ophir, Y., & Cappella, J. N. (2018). Designing Effective Testimonial Pictorial Warning Labels for Tobacco Products. Health Communication. 34(12), 1383-1394. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2018.1493417

Ophir, Y., Brennan, E., Maloney, E. K., & Cappella, J. N. (2017). The Effects of Graphic Warning Labels’ Vividness on Message Engagement and Intentions to Quit Smoking. Communication Research, 46(5), 619-638. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650217700226

Brennan, E., Maloney, E. K., & Ophir, Y., & Cappella, J. N. (2016). Potential effectiveness of pictorial warning labels that feature images and personal details of real people. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 19(10), 1138-1148. https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntw319

Cappella, J. N., Maloney, E. K., Ophir, Y., Brennan, E. (2015). Interventions to correct misinformation about tobacco products. Tobacco regulatory science, 1(2), 186-197.

Ophir, Y. & Weimann, G. (2012). From terrorist to Persona: Para-Social Interaction and the ETA website. Perspectives on terrorism, 6(1), 23-35

Book Chapters

Ophir, Y., Velho, R. M., & Tzivian, L. (Accepted, Exp. 2024). Communicating science in a growingly politicized environment. In Castillo, D. (Ed.) Truth-Seeking in Our Age of (Mis)Information Overload. SUNY Press.

Ophir, Y., Liu, A., Shah, P., Wang, R., Acosta, N., & Gillis, S. (Accepted, Exp. 2023). Science and health journalism and its effects on audiences. In Walsh-Childers, K. & McKinnon, M. (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Health and Science Journalism. Palgrave & McMillan Publishing.

Ophir, Y., & Walter, D. (2023). Computational Sentiment Analysis- A Critical Perspective. In Nabi, R., & Myrick, J. G. (Eds.). Our online emotional selves: The link between digital media and emotional experience. Oxford University Press.

Walter, D., & Ophir, Y. (2023). Online Foreign Propaganda Campaigns and Vaccine Misinformation: A Comparative Analysis. In Ginossar, T., & Shah, F. (Eds.). Communicating about Vaccines Online: Understanding and Counteracting Misinformation, Rumors and Lies. Palgrave McMillan.

Himelboim, I., Walter, D., & Ophir, Y. (Accepted, Exp 2023). What makes a misinformed tweet viral? A computational mixed method approach. In Porter, L. (Eds.). Political and Electoral Misinformation. LSU Press.

Ophir, Y., Sangalang, A., & Cappella, J. N. (2021). Testing the emotional flow hypothesis in health narratives. In Frank, L., & Falzone, P. (Eds.). Entertainment Education Behind the Scenes: Case Studies for Theory and Practice. Palgrave & MacMillan Publishing.

Cappella, J. N., Ophir, Y., & Sutton, J. (2017). The measurement of the public’s knowledge as the basis for assessing misinformation:  Application to tobacco products. In Southwell, B. G., Thorson, E. A., Sheble, L. (Eds.). Misinformation and mass audiences. University of Texas Press.