Mert Can Bayar (he/him)

Assistant Teaching Professor

Mert Can Bayar (he/him)

Assistant Teaching Professor

Education

Ph.D., State University of New York at Binghamton, Political Science
M.A., State University of New York at Binghamton, Political Science
B.A., Bogazici University, Political Science and International Relations
B.A., Bogazici University, History

Courses

  • B Data 200 Introduction to Data Studies
  • B DATA 497 Social Media: Data, Analysis, and Visualization

Teaching Interests

My teaching is grounded in the idea that students learn best when they understand not only how to use a method or tool, but also how to think with it. As a social scientist and now an Assistant Teaching Professor of Data Visualization, I approach data analysis and visualization as part of a broader process of reasoning: asking good questions, making careful choices about measurement and evidence, recognizing uncertainty, and communicating conclusions clearly. I want students to see methods not as a collection of technical procedures, but as tools for making and evaluating claims about the world. This means working with real and often messy data, questioning where data come from and what they leave out, and thinking critically about how analytical and visual choices shape the stories we tell. My goal is for students to leave my courses able to move from raw information to defensible claims and clear, audience-centered visual communication.

I see the classroom as a place where students should be able to experiment, make mistakes, revise their work, and develop confidence in their own reasoning. I use hands-on projects, discussion, and iterative assignments to connect technical skills to substantive problems that students recognize from the world around them, including social media, politics, news, and other contemporary information environments. At the same time, I try to make expectations transparent and provide multiple opportunities for students to practice and improve, while maintaining clear standards for evidence and reasoning. Analyzing data and producing effective visualizations require more than learning software: students need to think about audience, context, uncertainty, ethics, and the consequences of representing people and communities through data. I want students to become both capable data practitioners and critical consumers of quantitative and visual information.

Research and Scholarship Interests

My research examines threats to democracy that emerge from the contemporary information environment, particularly where elite rhetoric, political narratives, digital media, and platform affordances intersect. I am interested in how and when democracies erode, and in the role that information and narratives—especially conspiracy theories, rumors, and other forms of contested political information—play in legitimizing executive aggrandizement, democratic erosion, and political repression. Rather than treating these narratives simply as misinformation or inaccurate beliefs, I study them as frameworks through which political actors and citizens interpret power, legitimacy, political contestation, and participation. Methodologically, I use a mixed-method approach that combines computational, quantitative, experimental, and qualitative methods to answer theory-driven questions about the challenges facing contemporary democracies. My research, in this perspective, sits at the intersection of comparative politics, political behavior, political communication, and computational social science.

This agenda also guides my current and future projects. I am developing my dissertation research into a book that compares the United States and Türkiye as two very different institutional and political contexts facing processes of democratic erosion and autocratization. Drawing on cross-sectional surveys and experiments conducted in both countries in 2023 and 2026, the book examines when conspiratorial narratives increase citizens’ willingness to tolerate or support executive-led democratic erosion. My current research extends these questions into digital information environments. In one project, using a dataset of more than 117,000 Fox News YouTube videos and millions of user comments, my collaborators and I examine whether conspiratorial rhetoric in partisan media is associated with audience discourse supporting repression and the delegitimization of political opponents. More broadly, I am interested in building research designs that connect elite narratives, platform-mediated information environments, citizen responses, and system-level democratic outcomes.

My work has appeared across multiple disciplinary venues, including Scientific Data, Electoral Studies, the Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and the Journal of General Internal Medicine. My public-facing research has also been featured in major national and international outlets, including NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, and The Guardian.

  • AI@UW’s SEED-AI Grant with Dr. Katy Pearce. 2026. ($35,388)
  • Center for an Informed Public Innovation Fund. 2024. ($21,775)
  • Binghamton University Harpur College Faculty Research Grant with Dr. Ekrem Karakoc. 2023. ($5000)
  • Lyceum Center Graduate Student Fellowship for Educational Leadership. 2022. ($1000)
  • Binghamton University Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. 2021. ($500)
  • Bayar, M. C. (2025). Alien of the gaps: How 3I/ATLAS was turned into a spaceship online. CIP Research Report, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington.
  • Bayar, M.C., Prochaska, S., Aske, A. B., Schafer, J. S., Tomson, D.L., Spiro, E. S., Breaking news in the hands of few: Newsbrokering on X during the Trump assassination attempts. CIP Rapid Response Research Election Report.
  • Starbird, K., Bayar, M.C., Aske, A. B., Tomson, D.L., Spiro, E. S., Lutz, N., Grass, M. (2024). What to expect when we’re electing: The 5 moves of misleading election rumors. CIP Rapid Response Research Election Report.
  • Bayar, M. C., Aske, A. B., Tomson, D.L., Starbird, K., and West, J. (2024) The anatomy of a resurging rumor stemming from peer-reviewed research that non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. CIP Rapid Response Research Election Report.
  • Bayar, M. C., Aske, A. B., Lutz, N., Schafer, J. S., Prochaska, S., and Starbird, K. (2024). A boosted video resonates with ‘border crisis’ and ‘rigged election’ frames. CIP Rapid Response Research Election Report.
  • Caulfield, M., Bayar, M. C., Aske, A. B. (2023). The ‘new elites’ of X: Identifying the most influential accounts engaged in Hamas/Israel discourse CIP Rapid Response Research Special Report.
  • HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (aired on Feb 22, 2026). Twitter Episode.
  • RTBF (Based in Belgium) (April 30, 2025). Fan de jeux vidéo, narcissique et part sombre… Ce que X nous apprend d’Elon Musk.
  • NPR (April 17, 2025). How Elon Musk’s favorite news influencer is capitalizing on his clout.
  • NBC News (March 26, 2025). How a TikTok network spreading Spanish-language immigration misinformation gained traction.
  • Reuters (March 4, 2025). Musk rallies the far right in Europe. Tesla is paying the price.
  • Le Monde (Based in France) (Jan 24, 2025). Comment une poignée de comptes d’extrême droite influencent la vision qu’Elon Musk a de l’Europe. Link. (In French)
  • NPR. (August 14, 2024). Why false claims that a picture of a Kamala Harris rally was AI-generated matter.
  • The Seattle Times. (July 19th, 2024). Are WA Republicans or Democrats more worried about American democracy?
  • The New York Times. (November 1, 2024). Disinformation Watchdogs Are Under Pressure. This Group Refuses to Stop.
  • The Guardian. (October 30, 2024). Factchecking the most pervasive myths and lies about US elections.
  • Asahi (Based in Japan). (February 16, 2024). “X” Worsening misinformation contamination, advertisement price motive for spreading, number of impressions in billions.
  • NBC News. (October 20, 2023). 7 influential accounts are warping Israel-Hamas news on X, researchers find.
  • The Washington Post. (October 9, 2023). As false war information spreads on X, Musk promotes unvetted accounts.
  • “How Do You Know What to Believe?” Society + Technology at UW. Next After Hours on Election Rumors. October 5, 2026.
  • “The Power of Public Research.” Society + Technology at UW. Lightning talk on “Conspiracy.” October 2, 2026.
  • “Democracy in Focus:” Protecting Information Integrity: Election Rumor Research at the UW Center for an Informed Public. UW Provost’s Lecture Series on 2024 Elections. October 8th, 2024.
  • Election Rumors, Conspiracy Theories, and Democracy. University of Washington Alumni Association and Provost’s Talk Series on Election Research. May 2, 2024.
  • The ‘New Elites of X: Identifying the Most Influential Accounts Engaged in Hamas/Israel Discourse. Jackson School of International Studies at UW. War in the Middle East Lecture Series. February 6, 2024.
  • Prochaska, S.*& Bayar, M.C.*, Aske, A., Schafer, J. S., Starbird, K. Election Rumors in the U.S. Elections (2020-2022): Tropes, Mechanisms and Narratives (*first authors)
  • Uscinski, J. E., Enders, A., Klofstad,… Bayar, M. C. Do Conspiracy Theory Beliefs Form a Monological Belief System?
  • Bayar, M. C. Conspiracy Theories’ Role in Democratic Norm Erosion: Evidence from Turkey and The United States.
  • Bayar, M.C., Radnitz, S., Efstratiou, A., De, S. Conspiracy Theories and Polyarchy in the 21st Century: Analyzing the Role of Conspiracy Theories in Political Repression and Violence Discourses on YouTube.
  • Bayar, M. C., Meyer, M., Haynes, E., Mitigating Conspiracy Theory Beliefs with Socratic AI: Pragmatic Trials of Street Epistemology Dialogues