Faculty Research Grants
The Shorenstein Center provides financial support for Kennedy School faculty members performing research related to the Center's mission of exploring the intersection of press, politics and public policy in theory and practice. Applications for funding from Kennedy School faculty are accepted in the spring of every year. Faculty members who received funding for the 2008–2009 academic year are listed below.
Hannah Riley Bowles, HKS Associate Professor of Public Policy
Exploratory Studies in Gender and the Evaluation of Political Candidates
Professor Bowles will test whether female candidates for elective office are evaluated more favorably when they explain their motivations for running for office in terms of helping others as opposed to explaining why they deserve the office. Two other experiments will test whether female candidates can retain the positive effects of using a "helping others" script if they couple it with a "personal traits/qualification" script.
Elaine Kamarck, HKS Lecturer in Public Policy
The Media and the Big Mo: How the Need for Momentum in the Modern Nominating System Turns the Press into Participants
Success in the modern system consists of winning a series of public contents in which press coverage creates a unique strategicasset for the winners — momentum. Professor Kamarck will write a paper on the effect of momentum during more than 40 contests in the 2008 Democratic primary season. She will conclude with some thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages in electoral systems and offer some recommendations for how the press can cover a sequential nominating system in the future.
Faculty members who received funding for the 2007–2008 academic year are listed below.
Matthew Baum, Visiting Associate Professor of Public Policy
Effects of Journalists' Incentives on News Coverage of War and Foreign Policy
This study seeks to better understand the conditions under which the public will support a president who decides to go to war. It will examine how journalists, politicians, and the public interact to shape public attitudes about major foreign policy issues. Baum argues that while the literature on U.S. foreign policy and public opinion tends either to focus on immediate or longer-term public reactions, the relationship between the two is in fact a dynamic one. But the literature ignores the key function of the news media in mediating how the public evaluates foreign policy. Given the emergence of new media and its increasing prominence, this oversight may prove consequential for the media's decision-making process and for scholars' understanding of how the public thinks about foreign policy. Baum will assess the validity of his assumptions about journalistic preferences in old versus new media and trace the implications of these differences.
Todd L. Pittinsky, Assistant Professor of Public Policy
Press, Politics and the People: A National Study of Leadership Confidence
The National Study of Confidence in Leadership is an ongoing study examining the attitudes of the American public, tracking influences on the public's confidence in their leadership. Pittinsky will expand the study by adding a “press module” to further investigate the public's relationship with the press. Pittinsky and colleagues will examine changes in the public's confidence in the leadership of the press; ways in which political orientation and political party interact with confidence in the press; and how patterns of press consumption interact with political orientation in the United States. To read the 2007 National Leadership Index, please click here.
Marion R. Fremont-Smith, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy
Legal Constraints on Nonprofit Journalism
Fremont-Smith will study the legal constraints on nonprofit journalism, particularly those imposed by the Internal Revenue Code. She will argue that the code impedes a wider adoption of nonprofit journalism, examining under what conditions it would be feasible to operate newspapers and other forms of media as tax exempt nonprofit corporations, and suggest reforms that may be needed to make the nonprofit form available.
Alexander Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy
The Press and the Electoral College
Keyssar will examine the Electoral College as part of a book-length study of selected political institutions in the United States. Opinion polls as far back as the 1940s show that many Americans would support the abolition of the Electoral College. Why, then, has this “archaic and poorly designed” institution remained? The study will pursue this question by tracing the evolution of public opinion and public dialogue about the College, systematically looking at how the institution has been covered in the press in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The study will emphasize regional variations because of the critical role of race in the maintenance of the College.
Thomas Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press
Book Project
Patterson's funds will go toward a book-length study of how changes in communication and in the structure of political demands are affecting both citizen involvement and politics. He hypothesizes that while modern communication technologies like the Internet can broaden the public sphere, their main tendency is to create like-minded networks. This has serious consequences because these interest groups are stronger and more persistent than issue publics — groups that form around overarching, general interest issues such as political events. The widely available communications channels make it easier for interest groups to deepen and maintain their relationship with their constituencies. At the same time, though, this phenomenon “weakens political parties as aggregators of opinion.”
Christopher Stone, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of the Practice of Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice Reform in China: Assessing the Influence of U.S. and Chinese News Media
By examining Chinese coverage of the country's criminal justice reforms, this study will trace the mix of emulation and innovation in both the policies that China adopts and the terms in which the news media report and shape these debates. The goal is to better understand the influence of U.S. crime policy on the reform of criminal justice in China and the influence of the U.S. media on China's emerging news journalism.
Rohini Pande, Mohammed Kamal Professor of Public Policy
Political Mobilization in Rural India: Voter Awareness Campaigns and the Role of Media
The goal of this project is to better understand the nature of democratic accountability in developing societies by studying voter mobilization campaigns and the role of the media in mediating the impact of such campaigns. Rohini posits that existing research on the quality of governance largely focuses on institutional redress, and that there is little study of strengthening government accountability through the voting mechanism. Among other issues, this study will attempt to shed light on whether electoral outcomes reflect institutional weaknesses, limited voter information, or voter preference.
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