I am an associate professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. My additional Georgetown affiliations include serving as a courtesy associate professor in the Department of Government, faculty advisor to the Institute of Politics and Public Service ("GU Politics"), and a faculty affiliate of the Massive Data Institute, the Lab for Globalization and Shared Prosperity, and the Georgetown Democracy Initiative.
I study public opinion, the news media, partisan polarization, and the loss of confidence in institutions. My projects have been supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the National Science Foundation, and have appeared in academic journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the British Journal of Political Science.
I have contributed to three books. In 2026, I coauthored American Presidential Campaigns in the Attention Economy, which combined polling and media content data to show the power and limits of campaign strategies that dominate the attention economy. In 2020, I coauthored Words that Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign. In 2012, I published my first book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters. It examined the relationship between trust in the media, party polarization, and technological change, and won the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
My current work examines the relationship between confidence in institutions and support for democracy. To that end, I am the Principal Investigator of the American Institutional Confidence Poll, a panel survey with waves (so far) in 2018, 2021, and 2023.
I study public opinion, the news media, partisan polarization, and the loss of confidence in institutions. My projects have been supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the National Science Foundation, and have appeared in academic journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the British Journal of Political Science.
I have contributed to three books. In 2026, I coauthored American Presidential Campaigns in the Attention Economy, which combined polling and media content data to show the power and limits of campaign strategies that dominate the attention economy. In 2020, I coauthored Words that Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign. In 2012, I published my first book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters. It examined the relationship between trust in the media, party polarization, and technological change, and won the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
My current work examines the relationship between confidence in institutions and support for democracy. To that end, I am the Principal Investigator of the American Institutional Confidence Poll, a panel survey with waves (so far) in 2018, 2021, and 2023.