Thomas Davidson

Thomas Davidson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University's School of of Arts and Sciences. He received his PhD in Sociology from Cornell University in 2020 and specializes in computational sociology, with research focusing on political sociology, social movements, and digital methodologies.

Dr. Davidson's research interests span three main interconnected areas: social media, populism, and far-right activism; hate speech detection and content moderation; and computational methodology and artificial intelligence. His work uses digital trace data from social media combined with statistical analysis and computational methods including natural language processing and machine learning. He has published extensively on how ranking algorithms shape activist opportunities, racial bias in hate speech detection systems, and the application of generative AI in sociological research.

His notable scientific awards include the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Fellowship at the University of Chicago (2016) and a Foundational Integrity Research award from Meta for experimental research on social context and hate speech judgments. His research has been featured in major media outlets including The Washington Post, Vox, New Scientist, and Wired Magazine.

Dr. Davidson teaches undergraduate courses in Political Sociology, Sociology of Culture, and Data Science, and graduate courses in Computational Sociology and Statistical Methods. He has organized the first workshop on Generative AI and Sociology at Yale University and guest edited a special issue of Sociological Methods & Research on this topic. His research connects with several program areas at Rutgers including Culture and Cognition, Organizations and Networks, and Politics and Social Movements.