Eunji Kim

Eunji Kim is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, where she studies how cultural narratives embedded in entertainment media shape mass beliefs and political behavior. Her research challenges the long-standing assumption that media that citizens consume for pleasure — from reality television to crime procedurals to lifestyle influencers on TikTok — are too frivolous to shape political attitudes. 
 
Kim is the author of The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton University Press, 2025), which received the 2026 Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Her work has appeared in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), The Journal of Politics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She has been recognized with the 2024 Walter Lippmann Best Published Article Award, the AJPS Best Article Award, and the Kaid-Sanders Award for Best Political Communication Article, among other honors. Her research has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies. 
 
Kim received a joint PhD in political science and communication and master’s degrees in statistics and communication from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a BA in government from Harvard University. 

Kim’s project, “Online Gaming and Political Polarization Among Young Men,” investigates how gaming environments — where 70 percent of men under 30 spend their leisure hours — have become one of the most powerful but least understood sites of political socialization, shaping attitudes toward democratic norms, gender, and extremism. Combining a large-scale survey of young men, analysis of Discord and Twitch conversations, and interventions with streamers and moderators, the project moves from diagnosis to design by generating both rigorous evidence of gaming’s political effects and practical tools that platforms, parents, and policymakers can use to reduce polarization.

May 2026