I am a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and Harvard University Department of Government. I am also Faculty Chair of the Harvard Public Diplomacy Collaborative at the HKS Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

My research addresses the evolving relationship between the mass media, public opinion and presidential (as well as chief executives more generally) decision-making regarding foreign policy. Most scholars would agree that the media do influence public opinion – through such processes as priming, framing, and agenda setting -- and that public opinion does, at least sometimes, influence policy outcomes.  Yet our understanding of the causal relationships between the media, public opinion and policy outcomes remains incomplete. And no theory to date accounts for how these relationships might evolve. Have modern media technologies and practices affected Americans' – and their counterparts in other democracies -- fascination with and tolerance for war?  And will their reactions influence (perhaps reducing) the willingness of democratic leaders to employ military force as a policy tool in the future? My research can be divided into two central parts, broadly motivated by these two questions.

The first part explores the effects of a changing mass media environment over the past several decades – with an emphasis on the rise of so-called “new media,” including the soft news media -- on public perceptions and attitudes regarding politics and foreign affairs. The second part considers the implications of changes in public awareness of and attitudes toward politics and foreign policy for U.S. presidential decision-making, particularly in the realm of international conflict. Recently, I have extended the latter program to consider the implications of variations in electoral and media institutions beyond the United States on the relationships between mass media, public attitudes, and executive decision-making in potential conflict situations.

My Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Tabloid Wars: The Mass Media, Public Opinion and the Decision to Use Force Abroad" , argued that the Information Revolution has fundamentally changed how the mass media -- particularly television -- covers foreign crises and that this, in turn, has increased the American public's attentiveness to such crises.  I developed and tested a formal model, which showed that an attentive public can, under some circumstances, make it difficult for presidents to use force as a foreign policy tool.  

Articles based on my dissertation have appeared in the American Political Science Review ("Sex, Lies, and War: How Soft News Brings Foreign Policy to the Inattentive Public" ) Presidential Studies Quarterly and in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. My first book -- Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age (published in December 2003 by Princeton University Press) -- was also based on the dissertation.

I have published additional articles in the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Public Opinion Quarterly, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Political Communication, Conflict Management and Peace Science, and the American Political Science Review.  I have also published a number of op-ed articles, book reviews, and book chapters and have recently completed a second book (co-authored with Tim Groeling of UCLA). The book, titled War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Citizen Views of War is scheduled to be published in late 2009 by Princeton University Press.  

I have presented papers at the meetings of the Western, Southern, and Midwestern Political Science Associations, the International Studies Association, the Peace Science Society International and the Political Methodology Group, as well as at APSA (and numerous other venues). 

Courses I have taught include "Introduction to World Politics," "Mass Media, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy" (both as undergraduate and graduate seminars),  "Political Communication," and "Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy" (graduate seminar).

My skills include advanced statistics, formal theory, and qualitative case study research.  My dissertation advisors were: David Lake (Chair), Neal Beck , Miles Kahler, Sam Kernell , Paul Papayoanou, and Michael Schudson.