Benjamin Toff
206 Church St SE
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Benjamin Toff is an Associate Professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He studies news audiences and political engagement, public opinion, and changing journalistic practices. He is the author of Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism (2024, Columbia University Press, with Ruth Palmer and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen). His research has been published in the Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Communication, the International Journal of Press/Politics, Journalism, Journalism Studies, and Digital Journalism.
From 2020-2023, as Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, he led a multi-country research project studying trust in news, which is the subject of his second book project. He is also currently at work on a third book, which explores the changing role played by opinion polls in news coverage of American politics. This work extends research conducted as part of his doctoral dissertation, which received the American Political Science Association’s E.E. Schattschneider Award for best doctoral dissertation in the field of American government.
He received his PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016 and a BA in social studies from Harvard in 2005. Prior to entering academia, he worked as a journalist and researcher at The New York Times.
Educational Background
- B.A.: Social Studies, Harvard University, 2005
- M.A.: Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2012
- Ph.D.: Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016
Specialties
- Public opinion and polling
- News audiences
- Political communication
- Political engagement