Rachel Berwald

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at UCLA. My research primarily focuses on political communication in Brazil. I am on the academic job market in 2026–2027.

My research examines how political identity shapes the ways people process information. To do so, I focus on changing the environment in which individuals engage with information. My dissertation does so in three ways: (1) simple exposure to factual information, (2) exposure to information after engaging with an activity to decrease political identity salience, and (3) exposure through evidence-based pedagogy. I use survey experiments, lab-in-the-field experiments, AI, and text analysis in my research.

My paper “The Power of Pre-existing Beliefs: How Misinformation and Vote Choice Influenced Public Trust in Brazil’s 2022 Presidential Election” is forthcoming in the Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública. My work has been supported by the Bedari Kindness Institute, the Initiative to Study Hate, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language Area Studies program. I am a member of the Political Communication and Behavior Lab at UCLA. I have also served as an instructor of record, teaching fellow, and teaching assistant at UCLA and taught elementary special education before beginning my Ph.D.

My email is rberwald[at]ucla.edu.