Eunji Kim

Eunji Kim is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. As a political communication scholar, she primarily studies the impact of media content on mass attitudes and political behavior. Her book, The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton University Press 2025), examines how Americans' consumption of entertainment media distorts their belief in upward economic mobility and affects their redistributive policy preferences. 

Her recent projects explore a range of topics, including the role of The Apprentice in helping Trump's electoral performance in 2016, the influence of popular cop procedural shows on public perceptions of the criminal justice system, and the effects of following social media influencers on Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube. She is also studying the social media discourse surrounding the Gaza conflict and analyzing millions of book catalogs from school libraries to investigate censorship trends in the United States.

Kim's work has been published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Her research has received several prizes, including the American Political Science Association’s Best Dissertation in Political Psychology Award, Walter Lippmann Best Published Article Award, Best Article in Political Behavior Award, Paul Lazarsfeld Best Paper Award, Wilson Carey McWilliams Best Paper Award; Midwest Political Science Associaton's AJPS Best Article Award, International Communication Association’s Kaid-Sanders Best Political Communication Article Award; the International Society of Political Psychology’s Roberta Sigel Early Career Scholar Paper Award.  

The Russell Sage Foundation and Facebook have funded her research. Kim holds a Joint Ph.D. in Political Science and Communication, an M.A. in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from Harvard University.