Sandra González-Bailón, Ph.D.

Sandra González-Bailón's research areas include network science, data mining, computational tools, and political communication. Her applied research focuses on the analysis of social media, political protests, mobilization dynamics, information diffusion, and news consumption.

Sandra González-Bailón is an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, and affiliated faculty at the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences. Prior to joining Penn, she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute (2008-2013). She completed her doctoral degree in Nuffield College (University of Oxford) and her undergraduate studies at the University of Barcelona.

Her research lies at the intersection of network science, data mining, computational tools, and political communication. Her applied research looks at how online networks shape exposure to information, with implications for how we think about political engagement, mobilization dynamics, information diffusion, and news consumption. A sample of her recent research can be found here.

She is the author of the book Decoding the Social World (MIT Press, 2017) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Networked Communication (OUP, 2020). She serves as Associate Editor for the journals Social Networks, EPJ Data Science, and The International Journal of Press/Politics, and she is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science. She leads the research group DiMeNet (/daɪmnet/) — acronym for Digital Media, Networks, and Political Communication.

Her most recent projects include “Digital News and the Consumption of Information Online” (2017-2020, NSF award #1729412) and “Behavioral Effects of Exposure to Political Content in Social Media” (2020-2023, NSF award #2017655).