Bio

Nate Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Co-Director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative. He also holds appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies. Professor Persily’s work focuses on two distinct areas: the Law of Democracy and Governance of Technology. He is coauthor with Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, Richard Pildes and Franita Tolson of the casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., 2020), which addresses issues such as voting rights, political party regulation, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. He also served as the nonpartisan Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. His current work, for which he has been honored as a Guggenheim Fellow, Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, examines the governance of technology and technology’s impact on democracy. He is coeditor, with Joshua Tucker, of Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field and Prospects for Reform (Cambridge Press, 2020), and Artificial Intelligence, Politics, and Political Science (Cambridge Press, 2026). He is also co-editor of the Digitalist Papers: Artificial Intelligence and Democracy in America (2024) with Erik Brynjolfsson, Alex Pentland and Condoleeza Rice. Professor Persily cochairs the Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence of the American Political Science Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from Yale (1992); a J.D. from Stanford (1998) where he was President of the Stanford Law Review, and a Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley in 2002.

Academic Appointments

2025-26 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • Measuring receptivity to misinformation at scale on a social media platform. PNAS nexus Tokita, C. K., Aslett, K., Godel, W. P., Sanderson, Z., Tucker, J. A., Nagler, J., Persily, N., Bonneau, R. 2024; 3 (10): pgae396

    Abstract

    Measuring the impact of online misinformation is challenging. Traditional measures, such as user views or shares on social media, are incomplete because not everyone who is exposed to misinformation is equally likely to believe it. To address this issue, we developed a method that combines survey data with observational Twitter data to probabilistically estimate the number of users both exposed to and likely to believe a specific news story. As a proof of concept, we applied this method to 139 viral news articles and find that although false news reaches an audience with diverse political views, users who are both exposed and receptive to believing false news tend to have more extreme ideologies. These receptive users are also more likely to encounter misinformation earlier than those who are unlikely to believe it. This mismatch between overall user exposure and receptive user exposure underscores the limitation of relying solely on exposure or interaction data to measure the impact of misinformation, as well as the challenge of implementing effective interventions. To demonstrate how our approach can address this challenge, we then conducted data-driven simulations of common interventions used by social media platforms. We find that these interventions are only modestly effective at reducing exposure among users likely to believe misinformation, and their effectiveness quickly diminishes unless implemented soon after misinformation's initial spread. Our paper provides a more precise estimate of misinformation's impact by focusing on the exposure of users likely to believe it, offering insights for effective mitigation strategies on social media.

    View details for DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae396

    View details for PubMedID 39381645

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC11460357

  • ELECTION ADMINISTRATION AND THE RIGHT TO VOTE OUR NATION AT RISK Persily, N. edited by Greenberg, K. J., Zelizer, J. E. 2024: 191-215

    View details for Web of Science ID 001282431500011

  • Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity. Nature Aslett, K., Sanderson, Z., Godel, W., Persily, N., Nagler, J., Tucker, J. A. 2023

    Abstract

    Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to understanding belief in online misinformation1,2, with a particular focus on social networks. However, the dominant role of search engines in the information environment remains underexplored, even though the use of online search to evaluate the veracity of information is a central component of media literacy interventions3-5. Although conventional wisdom suggests that searching online when evaluating misinformation would reduce belief in it, there is little empirical evidence to evaluate this claim. Here, across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that online search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them. To shed light on this relationship, we combine survey data with digital trace data collected using a custom browser extension. We find that the search effect is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information. Our results indicate that those who search online to evaluate misinformation risk falling into data voids, or informational spaces in which there is corroborating evidence from low-quality sources. We also find consistent evidence that searching online to evaluate news increases belief in true news from low-quality sources, but inconsistent evidence that it increases belief in true news from mainstream sources. Our findings highlight the need for media literacy programmes to ground their recommendations in empirically tested strategies and for search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified here.

    View details for DOI 10.1038/s41586-023-06883-y

    View details for PubMedID 38123685

    View details for PubMedCentralID 7355018

  • Testing the Effect of Information on Discerning the Veracity of News in Real Time JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL POLITICAL SCIENCE Aslett, K., Sanderson, Z., Godel, W., Persily, N., Nagler, J., Bonneau, R., Tucker, J. A. 2023

    View details for DOI 10.1017/XPS.2023.20

    View details for Web of Science ID 001098572900001

  • THE MIRACLE AND TRAGEDY OF THE 2020 US ELECTION JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY Persily, N., Stewart, C. 2021; 32 (2): 159-178

    View details for Web of Science ID 000640102300012

  • A New Model for Industry-Academic Partnerships PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS King, G., Persily, N. 2020; 53 (4): 703–9

    View details for DOI 10.1017/S1049096519001021

    View details for Web of Science ID 000579627000012

  • Social Media and Democracy The State of the Field, Prospects for Reform Introduction SOCIAL MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY: THE STATE OF THE FIELD, PROSPECTS FOR REFORM Persily, N., Tucker, J. A. edited by Persily, N., Tucker, J. A. 2020: 1-9

    View details for Web of Science ID 000614246400002

  • Conclusion: The Challenges and Opportunities for Social Media Research SOCIAL MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY: THE STATE OF THE FIELD, PROSPECTS FOR REFORM Persily, N., Tucker, J. A. edited by Persily, N., Tucker, J. A. 2020: 313-331

    View details for Web of Science ID 000614246400014

  • Math on trial. Science (New York, N.Y.) Persily, N. 2019; 365 (6453): 523

    View details for DOI 10.1126/science.aay9836

    View details for PubMedID 31395759

  • CAN DEMOCRACY SURVIVE THE INTERNET? JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY Persily, N. 2017; 28 (2): 63-76

    View details for Web of Science ID 000399519200006

  • Revisiting Public Opinion on Voter Identification and Voter Fraud in an Era of Increasing Partisan Polarization STANFORD LAW REVIEW Stewart, C., Ansolabehere, S., Persily, N. 2016; 68 (6): 1455-1489

    View details for Web of Science ID 000380866400004

  • TESTING SHAW V. RENO: DO MAJORITY-MINORITY DISTRICTS CAUSE EXPRESSIVE HARMS? NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW Ansolabehere, S., Persily, N. 2015; 90 (4): 1041-1065

    View details for Web of Science ID 000363599300002

  • Counting on the census?: Race, group identity, and the evasion of politics. STANFORD LAW REVIEW Persily, N., Skerry, P. 2001; 53 (4): 1077-1113

    View details for Web of Science ID 000168598200007

  • International extradition and the right to bail STANFORD JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Persily, N. A. 1998; 34 (2): 407-442

    View details for Web of Science ID 000165539700005