Sydney Sauer

Research Interests: Cultural sociology, medical sociology, experimental methods, historical methods, science communication

Sydney Sauer Sydney Sauer is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. She studies the relationship between information and public opinion, with a focus on health. Her work approaches this topic from two complementary angles: one focused on consumers of information, and the other on producers. 

Sydney's work on information consumption examines how individuals interact with information to form and update their beliefs, primarily using survey experiments. In 2024, she published an experimental study in Social Science & Medicine assessing how public perceptions of fentanyl overdose victims change depending on the details provided about the victim's demographics and life history. She is currently working on several related projects with faculty coauthors. 

Sydney is also a monthly science columnist for Filter, where she covers new studies about harm reduction and substance use across a wide range of academic disciplines. Previously, she worked as a predoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University, and she is a proud graduate of The Ohio State University (2023).

Previous Degrees:
The Ohio State University, Sociology, B.S. (honors), 2023