Tom Ksiazek

I am a PhD candidate in the Media, Technology and Society program at Northwestern University. After completing my BA in Communication Studies at the University of Pittsburgh in 2004 I worked in the newsroom at the ABC affiliate (WTAE) in Pittsburgh. In 2007 I completed my MA in Media, Technology and Society at Northwestern and I am scheduled to complete my PhD in 2010.

My program of research focuses on media industries and audience behavior. More specifically, I am interested in media use across platforms, how people cope with an environment of content abundance, and how such behaviors “scale up” to larger concerns of social fragmentation and polarization. I examine these issues within a theoretical framework that integrates structure and agency (macro and micro factors) to understand how audience behavior and the media environment interact with one another. I employ both quantitative and qualitative methods in my research, though my current work applies network analysis to media use across television and the Internet.

My dissertation explores patterns of cross-platform audience behavior that emerge in a contemporary media environment characterized by an abundance of content, a tendency for that content to be available to consumers across multiple platforms, and a finite amount of audience attention available to consume that content. Using data from Nielsen’s TV/Internet Convergence Panel and network analytics, I am examining patterns of audience fragmentation and polarization, both of which have important social, political, cultural, and policy implications. Moreover, I am identifying what I call “media publics,” or groups of individuals aggregated by similarities in their media consumption behavior across a large number of content items. Finally, I am developing an approach that integrates macro-structural and micro-individual explanatory factors in the prediction of these media publics.

My research has been published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media and Journalism Studies and I have presented my work at numerous conventions, including AEJMC, AoIR, ICA, ICWSM, Harvard Political Networks, MAPOR, and NCA.

Thomas B. Ksiazek
PhD Candidate | Media, Technology & Society
Northwestern University
tom.ksiazek@u.northwestern.edu | tom.ksiazek@gmail.com