Selected Current Research Projects

Changing Media Environment: Effects on Attention, Learning, Engagement, Attitudes and Mass and Elite Political Behavior

The newest projects in my research agenda examine questions about the political implications of the changing global media environment, namely expanding media choice and mobile internet access.

Current Projects:

• Attention to News in a Mobile Era (With Kathleen Searles) 
• Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization (With Josh Darr and Matt Hitt)
  
• The House that Fox Built? Representation, Political Accountability and the Rise of Cable News (With Vin Arceneaux, Martin Johnson, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen)
• "Screen Size and Physiological Responses to Video News" (With Stuart Soroka)​

Campaign News

My research addresses questions relating to the myriad of different institutional and contextual factors that influence news media coverage of campaigns, candidates, and issues. I am also interested in exploring these influences on the quality of information in political news more generally (i.e. political processes occurring outside the campaign context), and the depiction or minority and women candidates in campaign news.  

Media and Group Bias

While most of my research examines influences on campaign related news, I also examine factors that influence how immigrants, immigration related issues, Latinos, women, and events are depicted in the news. I am also interested in how identity salience drives media selections and choice, and how media selection influences identity.  

Current projects:

• "The Political Effects of Spanish Language Media Choice."​ (With Joshua Darr, Brittany Perry, and Mingxiao Sui)
• "Empathy and Threat Cues in News Coverage of Refugees" (With Vin Arceneaux, Bert Bakker, and Madelyn Phillips)

Political Advertising

Another area of my research centers on political advertising.