Lauren RubensteinJanuary 28, 20162min
  The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life will host a series of three panels in February and March on the refugee crisis. All events will take place in PAC 001. The first panel, The Development of the Crisis and the Response in Europe, will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 3. Moderated by Professor of Economics Richard Grossman, the panel is comprised of Bruce Masters, the John E. Andrus Professor of History; Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria; and Marcie Patton, professor of politics at Fairfield University. The second panel, The Refugee Experience, will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 17. Moderated by…

Lauren RubensteinDecember 18, 20154min
The campaign season so far has seen a significant increase in the volume of GOP presidential ads, and an explosion in advertising by super PACs and other outside groups. Outside groups sponsored 81 percent of ads between January 1–December 9, 2015—a 71 percent increase over 2011, and 12,000 percent increase over 2007. This was the finding of an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project, its first of the 2016 election cycle. The "remarkable growth in campaign activity by independent groups" it found was covered by The Washington Post, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, USA Today, Vox and others. Notably, the report found little…

Lauren RubensteinNovember 18, 20155min
In an op-ed written for Inside Sources (and appearing in Las Vegas Sun and other newspapers), Assistant Professor of Government Ioana Emy Matesan questions whether the swift French military response to the recent ISIS attacks on Paris will be effective in preventing future attacks and improving security for civilians. Matesan, who studies contentious politics and political violence in the Middle East, considers different opinions on ISIS's strategic logic and what each would mean for the repercussions of a military response. She concludes that the most likely logic is one of provocation. She writes: [Provocation] is a strategy beloved by al-Qaida and many other extremist groups,…

Lauren RubensteinOctober 22, 20152min
This election cycle, those presidential candidates who use the simplest language are performing best in the polls, an analysis by The Boston Globe found. "There's no time to explain in modern politics," Elvin Lim, associate professor of government, told the Globe. On the Republican side, front-runner Donald Trump's speeches, with short, simple words and sentence, could be understood by a fourth grader, according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. In comparison, Mike Huckabee and Jim Gilmore, who are struggling in the polls, communicate with voters at a 10th grade level. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's speeches are "just right for eighth graders," while Bernie Sanders…

stu_holmes_2015-0707001913.jpg
Lauren RubensteinJuly 10, 20153min
In this News @ Wesleyan story, we speak with Joli Holmes from the Class of 2017. She is one of 24 students in the Quantitative Analysis Center's Summer Apprenticeship Program. Q: Joli, what is your major and what’s your specific area of interest? A: I’m an economics major. I'm particularly interested in studying investment-related practices from an environmental and social perspective. Q: Have you worked in the Quantitative Analysis Center before this summer? A: I’ve taken a lot of classes through the QAC, including “Working with R,” “Excel with Visual Basic for Applications,” and “Python.” These are all classes on how to use…

Erika-headshot.jpeg
Lauren RubensteinFebruary 9, 20153min
As controversy over the measles vaccine continues to grow, and prominent politicians weigh in with their views, Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler writes in The Washington Post's "Monkey Cage" blog about the dangerous consequences that politicization of vaccine issues in the news media can have on public support for vaccines in general. In an article co-authored with with Sarah Gollust '01, now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health, Fowler considers the the 2009 dust-up over mammography screening recommendations, and the 2006-07 debate over whether to require girls to get the HPV vaccine. Though neither started…

Lauren RubensteinFebruary 4, 20152min
Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler recently had two new articles on advertising in the 2014 elections published. Co-written with her Wesleyan Media Project co-director Travis Ridout of Washington State University, "Political Advertising in 2014: The Year of the Outside Group" was published in The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics in December 2014. The paper notes a plateau in political advertising volumes and levels of negativity this election cycle, and an increasingly prominent role played by outside groups, especially in competitive races for the U.S. Senate. It also tracks the most competitive races, looks at issues featured in ads,…

Lauren RubensteinApril 30, 20141min
The Wesleyan Media Project's research was cited by U.S. Senator Angus King of Maine during a hearing April 30 of the Senate Committee on Rules & Administration. The subject of the hearing was "Dollars and Sense: How Undisclosed Money and Post-McCutcheon Campaign Finance Will Affect 2014 and Beyond." Watch a recording of the webcast here. The Wesleyan Media Project, directed by Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler and collaborators at Bowdoin College and Washington State University, works to increase transparency about political advertising. It tracks political ad airings on television and reports in real time about ad sponsors, spending,…

Lauren RubensteinApril 30, 20141min
The Wesleyan Media Project has received a grant of $74,800 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to track and analyze campaign ad spending in the 2014 midterm election cycle. The project is directed by Assistant Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, along with Michael Franz of Bowdoin College and Travis Ridout of Washington State University. A resource for journalists, policymakers, scholars and voters, the project has worked to increase transparency in federal elections since it was established in 2010 with support from Knight Foundation. Read more about the grant and the Wesleyan Media Project’s work here.

Olivia DrakeMarch 14, 20143min
John Finn, professor of government, is the author of Peopling the Constitution (Constitutional Thinking), published by the University Press of Kansas on Feb. 24. According to the University Press of Kansas, Peopling the Constitution outlines a very different view of the Constitution as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This "Civic Constitution" constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming "the people" into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with the legal model, the "Juridic Constitution," Finn offers a comprehensive account of the Civic Constitution as a public affirmation of the shared principles of…

Olivia DrakeMarch 3, 20143min
Logan Dancey,  assistant professor of government, is the co-author of  "Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge," published in American Journal of Political Science 57 No. 2, 312-325, April 2013. Erika Franklin Fowler, assistant professor of government, is the co-author of  "Political and News Media Factors Shaping Public Awareness of the HPV Vaccine," published in Women's Health Issues 23 No. 3, e143-e151, 2013. Giulio Gallarotti, professor of government, professor of environmental studies, tutor in the College of Social Studies,  is the author of "The Enduring Importance of Hobbes in the Study of IR," published in e-International Relations, Jan. 10, 2013. Elvin Lim, associate professor of…