Seth Lewis

Biography

Seth C. Lewis is the inaugural Elcan Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. For two decades, he has studied the social implications of emerging technologies and their consequences for news and public life — from the early days of social media to automation, algorithms, and generative AI. His work has been cited some 20,000 times. He is co-author of Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination (Polity Press, 2026), the forthcoming American Cynicism: Why We Distrust Media, Medicine, and Academia (MIT Press, 2027), and News After Trump (Oxford University Press, 2021). A two-time winner of the International Communication Association’s award for outstanding article of the year in journalism studies, he chaired the ICA’s Journalism Studies Division from 2020 to 2022. Before joining UVA in 2026, he was the founding holder of the Shirley Papé Chair in Emerging Media at the University of Oregon. He began his career as a journalist, and worked at The Miami Herald before pursuing a Ph.D.