Anmol Panda

I am a computational social scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, where I study how digital media, political communication, and algorithmic systems shape public life. My research combines large-scale data science, natural language processing, causal inference, and survey methods to understand how people engage with information—and how platforms, news organizations, and political actors shape that engagement. A central strand of my work examines how generative AI can improve data curation in large archives: through an IMLS-funded project, I develop LLM-based methods for generating semantic metadata and knowledge graphs that expand search, discovery, and usability across millions of variables in repositories such as ICPSR. I also build scalable computational infrastructures, including social media archives and automated pipelines for identifying political actors online.

My research has analyzed how digital paywalls reshape news coverage, how political elites frame issues on social media, and how media consumption and platform engagement relate to public opinion and political behavior—especially among Asian American communities. Before my doctoral studies, I worked at Microsoft Research India and consulted for the World Bank, experiences that deepened my interest in applied computational research, large-scale data systems, and global information inequalities. My work appears in venues such as PNAS Nexus, CSCW, and Social Media + Society, and reflects a broader commitment to building transparent, ethical, and accessible information ecosystems.

Pronouns

He/Him

Dissertation title (provisional)

Digital Media, Race, and Political Behavior: Examining Asian American Attitudes and Voting Behavior in the Trump Era

Areas of interest

Computational Social Science; Artificial Intelligence; Science, Technology, and Society

Education

B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science, BITS Pilani, 2016
Ph.D. Information Science, University of Michigan, 2026

Selected publications

Working Papers 

A. Panda, Z. Akbar, J. Mendelsohn, C. Budak, and M. Bui, Motivational & gendered framing in networked publics on indian social media: A case study of #hindusunderattack, in Revise & Resubmit at Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2025. 

A. Panda and L. Hemphill, Modalities of political engagement on social media and voting for donald trump: Capturing heterogeneity by race over time, In Submission to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2025. 

A. Panda and L. Hemphill, The relationship of social media and news media diet with attitudes of asian americans toward policing and immigration, Under Revision, 2025. 

Journal Articles 

P. S. Dhillon, A. Panda, and L. Hemphill, How digital paywalls shape news coverage, PNAS nexus, vol. 4, no. 1, pgae511, 2025. 

L. Hemphill, A. Schöpke-Gonzalez, and A. Panda, Comparative sensitivity of social media data and their acceptable use in research, Scientific Data, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 643, 2022. 

J. Pal and A. Panda, Twitter in the 2019 indian general elections: Trends of use across states and parties, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 54, no. 51, pp. 1–17, 2019. 

Major Peer-Reviewed Conference Publications 

S. Z. Akbar, A. Panda, D. Kukreti, A. Meena, and J. Pal, Misinformation as a window into prejudice: Covid-19 and the information environment in india, CSCW3, vol. 4, ACM New York, NY, USA, 2021, pp. 1–28. 

L. Bozarth, A. Panda, C. Budak, and J. Pal, From greetings to corruption: Politicians, political parties, and tweeting in india, in Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, 2020, pp. 1–13. 

A. Panda, S. Chakraborty, N. Raval, H. Zhang, M. Mohapatra, S. Z. Akbar, and J. Pal, Affording extremes: Incivility, social media and democracy in the indian context, in Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, 2020, pp. 1–12. 

A. Panda, A. Gonawela, S. Acharyya, D. Mishra, M. Mohapatra, R. Chandrasekaran, and J. Pal, Nivaduck-a scalable pipeline to build a database of political twitter handles for india and the united states, in International Conference on Social Media and Society, 2020, pp. 200–209. 

A. Panda, R. Kommiya Mothilal, M. Choudhury, K. Bali, and J. Pal, Topical focus of political campaigns and its impact: Findings from politicians’ hashtag use during the 2019 indian elections, CSCW1, vol. 4, ACM New York, NY, USA, 2020, pp. 1–14.