Gabriel Rossman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an economic and cultural sociologist and uses statistical analysis, agent-based models, and social network analysis. He has studied the entertainment industry, especially pop music radio and the role of the Oscars in the film industry. One of his major theoretical foci is how people and institutions structure disreputable immoral transactions (e.g., bribery) to make them less offensive. His other major theoretical focus is how ideas and behaviors flow through social systems with particular attention to how top-down processes like advertising and government mandates shape the diffusion of innovation.
Rossman earned his BA at UCLA and his PhD at Princeton University. He is active at UCLA where he has served as vice-chair of his department and several roles in the academic senate. He is the author of Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2012) and articles in such journals as American Sociological Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sociological Science, Sociological Theory, and Sociological Methodology. In addition, he has written business school case studies and articles for such popular outlets as City Journal.
Rossman has several active research interests. One is a new method for testing the joint importance of multiple ties within a social network. Another project gives a structural model for the development of the Catholic Church in the first millennium. His primary focus while visiting SNF Agora will be studying the effects of executive orders targeting DEI both in the federal bureaucracy and the broader economy.