Research Interests
media effectssocial protest and conflictinformation seekingthird-person perception
Opportunities
Work Study Positions Available: No
Grant Funded Positions Available: No
Course-Credit Research Opportunities Available: Yes
I appreciate the opportunity to mentor students interested in research through independent study projects. Interested students should contact me 1 semester before they are interested in enrolling.
Volunteer Research Positions Available: No
Biography
My research broadly focuses on how news media present issues to the public, how and why people use media, and the implications of news coverage and media use patterns on subsequent outcomes such as information seeking, public opinion, and perceptions of media effects. These broader interests typically culminate in two specific streams of research. The first stream specifically addresses news treatment of protest groups and how such treatment affects participation in the political process. Basically, I explore what news coverage of protest looks like and then examine how specific coverage patterns might shape people's willingness to protest. The second stream of my research explores the processes underlying how people make sense of media including the third-person perception - a common pattern where people typically perceive others to be more affected by media than they are - and the resulting third-person effect, often characterized by support for censorship and other regulatory responses. Within this stream I also study how shifts in news content can impact how people process and use the media-based information they encounter.
