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Do Won Kim

I am a PhD candidate in Information at the University of Maryland, advised by Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia and Cody Buntain. I am also a student affiliate at TRAILS (The Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law and Society).

My research lies at the intersection of computational social science and human-AI interaction. I examine how AI-driven information systems shape political behavior and democratic outcomes. Using computational and experimental methods, I study how interventions in digital information environments can reduce misinformation, mitigate political polarization, and strengthen democratic trust. For more details, see my Dissertation Projects.


Beyond my dissertation's focus on political information and democratic processes, I study how emerging information technologies shape broader online information environments. This includes work from the Prosocial Ranking Challenge and research on using LLMs to better align news feed recommendations with users' stated values. I am also interested in how AI is reshaping the production of scientific knowledge itself.

News

[Jun. 2026]
Awarded the MPower Early Scholars Investment Fund 🎉
[Jun. 2026]
Presented our poster, AI Can Reduce Political Polarization by Challenging Partisan Expectations, at the AI and Social Research: Empathic AI, Metascience, and Methodology Conference at Penn State University.
[May. 2026]
Awarded the Humane Studies Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies 🥳
[May. 2026]
Awarded the Doctoral Students Research Awards!
[May. 2026]
Awarded the Dean's Fellowship!
[Apr. 2026]
Awarded the Graduate Student Summer Research Fellowship! 🎉
[Apr. 2026]
Paper accepted at CSCW 2026!
[Mar. 2026]
Accepted a paper presentation for APSA!
[Jan. 2026]
Had fun giving a tutorial on LLM applications for political science research at Korea University's Graduate Methods Workshop!
[Nov. 2025]
I successfully defended my dissertation proposal 🍾
[May. 2025]
Awarded the Dean's Fellowship! 🎉
[May. 2025]
A paper accepted and will be presented at the PolNet-PaCSS 😆
[May. 2025]
A workshop paper accepted and will be presented at the Global Election and Information Security Workshop , co-located with ACM WebSci 2025!
[April. 2025]
1 talk + 2 posters accepted for IC2S2 2025!
[Jan. 2025]
Paper accepted for the IPSA World Congress of Political Science!
[Dec. 2024]
Passed the milestone and advanced to PhD candidacy!
[Nov. 2024]
Awarded the College Information Studies Alumni Chapter Scholarship ($1,000).
[Sept. 2024]
Awarded the Humane Studies Fellowship from the Institute for Humane Studies ($4,000)
[Aug. 2024]
Awarded the Doctoral Students Research Awards ($1,500)
[July. 2024]
Awarded the Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Grant ($250) for IC2S2!
[June. 2024]
[May. 2024]
🥳 Our team was selected as one of nine finalists of the Prosocial Ranking Challenge, a worldwide crowdsourcing challenge organized by the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley!
[April. 2024]
Accepted a poster presentation for IC2S2 2024!
[April. 2024]
Served as a Program Committee member for the International Workshop on Cyber Social Threats (CySoc 2024) at the 2024 International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM).
[April. 2024]
Became an affiliated PhD student at the Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law and Society (TRAILS).
[Mar. 2024]
Reviewed a paper (Behaviour & Information Technology).
[Feb. 2024]
Reviewed ICWSM 2024 papers.
[May. 2023]
🥳 I am thrilled to have received the Dean's Fellowship during my first year of doctoral studies at UMD!