Avner Kantor

Computational Social Scientist

I study when and how information environments enable collective engagement in online discourse, combining game-theoretic modeling with large-scale computational analysis.

avnerkantor@gmail.com SSRN Google Scholar Download CV
Avner Kantor

About

I study how information environments shape who participates in online public discourse and under what conditions coordination happens, combining game theory, causal identification, and computational methods applied to large-scale online news commenting data. My research sits at the intersection of information systems, economics, and computational social science. My primary empirical setting is large-scale online news commenting, where I analyze how journalistic information design influences the coordination dynamics that precede network formation.

PhD in Information & Knowledge Management, University of Haifa under the supervision of Prof. Sheizaf Rafaeli. Currently a Statistician at the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel; incoming Guest Researcher at the Center for the Study of Rationality, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Academic Positions

Center for the Study of Rationality, Hebrew University of JerusalemIncoming 2026
Guest ResearcherJerusalem, Israel
Reichman University (IDC Herzliya)2021–2022
Adjunct Lecturer, Lauder School of GovernmentHerzliya, Israel
  • Taught “Introduction to Data Science with Python for Government.”
University of Haifa2015–2018
Research Fellow, Center for Internet ResearchHaifa, Israel
  • Designed and launched OpenPISA, an open-data platform for the OECD PISA database.

Selected Publications

Full publication list, conference presentations, and invited talks in the CV.

Professional Experience