Scott L. Althaus
Contact Information
Office: 256 Lincoln Hall
Telephone: (217) 333-8968
Email: salthaus@uiuc.edu
Website: http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/users/salthaus
Associate Professor; Joint appointment in Political Science
Bio
Professor Althaus is currently pursuing research projects on the role of news coverage in shaping public support for war and on the targeting strategies and election-day effects of presidential campaign activities. He is working on two book manuscripts dealing with war and media coverage. The first examines American involvement in wars from World War I to the present and the factors that influence public support for wars. It focuses on questions about the role of casualties and news coverage in eroding public support for a conflict. The second book project looks at efforts by American government and military officials to influence news coverage of U.S. wars over the last 100 years. Although many people believe that these activities successfully shape news coverage and thereby influence the public’s perceptions of war, this book shows to the contrary that governments have less power to spin wars than is commonly believed.
Professor Althaus is also pursuing a second project with collaborators Peter Nardulli and Daron Shaw that investigates the targeting strategies and effects of spot advertising and candidate appearances in presidential elections. Their goal is to document the geographic distribution of local advertising intensity and campaign appearances all the way back to 1952—the first “television” campaign in presidential history—so that they can make a more general statement about the targeting strategies and effects of campaign activity in presidential elections. They have already compiled a comprehensive list of every public appearance made by every major-party presidential and vice-presidential candidate going back to 1952. The final stage of their project involves visits by members of their research team to presidential libraries and collections of papers from presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The purpose of these visits is to locate information about the amount of spot advertising aired during the general election season by each campaign, as well as to locate strategy documents that detail the campaigner’s intended uses of spot advertising and media appearances.
Curriculum Vitae
Experience
- Political communication; public opinion; construction of news texts; opinion surveys and political behavior as channels for mass communication; political campaigns; political impact of “new media” and Internet technologies; communication concepts in democratic theory; quantitative analysis of political discourse.
Education
- Ph.D., Northwestern University
Selected Publications
Cortell, Andrew, Robert Eisinger, and Scott Althaus. Forthcoming. “Why Embed? Explaining the Bush Administration’s Decision to Embed Reporters in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq” American Behavioral Scientist.
Althaus, Scott. 2007. “Free Falls, High Dives, and the Future of Democratic Accountability.” In The Politics of News/The News of Politics, 2nd ed. Doris Graber, ed. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.
Althaus, Scott, and Young Mie Kim. 2006. “Priming Effects in Complex Information Environments: Reassessing the Impact of News Discourse on Presidential Approval.” Journal of Politics 68(4): 960-976.
Althaus, Scott. 2006. “False Starts, Dead Ends, and New Opportunities in Public Opinion Research.” Critical Review 18(1–3): 75-104.
Edy, Jill, Scott Althaus, and Patricia Phalen. 2005. “Using News Abstracts to Represent News Agendas.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 82(2): 434-46.
Althaus, Scott, and Devon Largio. 2004. “When Osama Became Saddam: Origins and Consequences of the Change in America’s Public Enemy #1.” PS: Political Science & Politics. 37(4): 795-9.
Althaus, Scott. 2003. “When News Norms Collide, Follow the Lead: New Evidence for Press Independence.” Political Communication 20(4): 381-414.
Althaus, Scott. 2003. Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People. New York: Cambridge University Press.