Conference Participants

Bruce Bimber is on the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is Assistant Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Center for Information Technology and Society. His research addresses the interplay of information, technology, and democratic processes. He is author of several articles about the Internet and politics in the US, and The Politics of Expertise in Congress, a study of expertise and information in Congress. Before joining the UCSB faculty, he worked at RAND, where he served in the Critical Technologies Institute, a research center providing policy advice to the White House on issues of technology policy, competitiveness, and the environment. He has also been affiliated with the Brookings Institution.

Bette Jean Bullert is a communication scholar, a documentary film maker and an oral historian. She received her Ph.D. in communication from the University of Washington in 1995. Since then, she has taught communication and video production as an Assistant Professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Penn. In Fall 1999, she was a Fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Her fellowship research focused on the integral role of public relations professionals in the shaping of the anti-sweatshop movement in the United States. She is the author of Public Television: Politics and the Battle Over Documentary Film (Rutgers University Press 1997), and the producer/director of four public television documentaries, God and Money (co-produced with John de Graaf in 1986), Circle of Plenty (1987), Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American (1994), and Alki: Birthplace of Seattle (1997). In addition, she has produced several short-format works, including Yip Harburg: Lyricist (1999) and A Place to be Duwamish (1999). She is currently producing a one-hour special, Chief Seattle, to be completed by Jan. 2001, and is developing an oral history project about activism and global interdependency. Dr. Bullert has lectured at several universities and conferences on public television, art and controversy. She lives in Seattle

Peter Dahlgren is professor of Media and Communication Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His research deals with media, democracy, and citizens in late modern society. Currently his particular focus is on the newer media’s role in regard to civic identity and everyday culture. His most recent book is Television and the Pubic Sphere, Sage, 1995.

Michael X. Delli Carpini, Director of the Public Policy program of the Pew Charitable Trusts, received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Prior to coming to the Trusts, Mr. Delli Carpini was professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. His research explores the role of the citizen in American Politics, with particular emphasis on the impact of the mass media on public opinion and political knowledge. He is author of Stability and Change in American Politics: The Coming of Age of the Generation of the 1960s (New York University Press, 1986) and What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters (Yale University Press, 1996), as well as numerous articles and essays on public opinion, political socialization, and political communications.

David Domke is an assistant professor in the School of Communications at the University of Washington. His research interests include political values and cognition, elite and media interactions in framing and priming, and social change.

Nina Eliasoph, Assistant professor, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. My work has asked in various contexts how citizens actually talk politics--or avoid talking politics--in everyday life; how political ideas circulate throughout the body politic; what happens to burning political ideas that people cannot discuss; how people create face-to-face contexts that make political conversation impossible (or possible). To ask these questions, I have done ethnography with volunteers, activists, recreation groups, and journalists; and have analyzed media coverage of citizenship. BA, Yale University, Political Science, 1982; MA and Ph.D from University of California-Berkeley, Sociology , 1993. Recipient of National Communications Association Diamond Anniversary Award in 1999 for "most outstanding book" for Avoiding Politics:How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge University Press, 1998); "Best Article in Sociology of Culture Award" in 1998 for "Making a Fragile Public: A Talk-Centered Study of Citizenship and Power" (in Sociological Theory, Nov. 1996) from the American Sociological Association; Annenberg Scholar, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania,1994-5.

John Gastil (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994) is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Washington. He is the author of Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making, and Communication (New Society, 1993) and By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections (University of California, 2000).

Susan Herbst is Professor of Political Science and Director of American Studies at Northwestern University. She is author of Reading Public Opinion (University of Chicago, 1998), Politics at the Margin (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Numbered Voices (University of Chicago, 1993).

Sabine Lang has been Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Kennedy-Institute, Free University Berlin, since 1997. She studied political science, German literature and sociology at the University of Freiburg, was Fulbright Fellow at the New School for Social Research, New York, and received her Diplom in political science at the Free University in Berlin. She started her PhD work with Prof. Leo Lowenthal at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation research on „The Political Public Sphere and the State" was funded by the Hamburger Institut for Sozialforschung and completed during a two year lectureship in the Department of Political Science at the University of Leipzig in 1997. From 1991 to 1994 she was director of the media and public relations department and head of the executive office of the State Secretary for Labor and Womens’ Issues in Berlin. She is currently working on her Habilitation research project „Mobilizing for Participatory Democracy - ‘Best Practice’ Models in Germany and the United States".

Regina G. Lawrence, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Portland State University. B.A. History and Political Science, Metropolitan State College; M.A. Political Science, University of Colorado at Denver; Ph.D. Political Science, University of Washington. Teaching areas: Mass media and politics, public opinion, and public law. Her research interests include media coverage of public policy issues and of the criminal justice system, the politics of policy-making in mass-mediated discourse, and the effects of news events on public understandings of political issues. She has authored a book on media coverage of police brutality as well as articles on media coverage of the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the shooting at Columbine High, and the 1994 welfare reform debate.

Paolo Mancini is Associate Professor at the Dipartimento Istituzioni e Societ Facolt di Scienze Politiche, Universita di Perugia and Academical Chair of Scuola di Giornalismo Radiotelevisivo (School of Broadcast Journalism, (Perugia). He is Director of Centro Interuniversitario di Comunicazione Politica (Interuniversitary Center of Political Communication). In 1983 Mancini was Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego and in 1984 at the Department of Literature of the same University. In 1995 Mancini was fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University. In 1997 Mancini taught at the Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego. Mancini is the author of: "Il manifesto Politico. per una semiologia del consenso" (Torino, ERI, 1980), "Videopolitica. Telegiornali in Italia e in USA" (Torino, ERI, 1985), "Come vincere le elezioni" (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988), "Persone in scena" (Torino, ERI, 1993), "Sussurri e grida dalle Camere" (Milano, Angeli, 1994), "Manuale di comunicazione pubblica" (Bari, Laterza, 1996). With David Swanson he edited "Politics, Media and Modern Democracy" (New York, Praeg "European Journal of Communication", "Communication", "Journal of Communication" and in a number of collective books in English. Mancini is corresponding editor of: "European Journal of Communication", "Press and Politics", "The Communication Review", and "Political Communication". In 1983 Mancini was awarded the Diego Fabbri Prize and in 1996 the Coppa dell\rquote Amicizia Valdostana.

Gianpietro Mazzoleni is professor of sociology of mass communication at the University of Genoa (Italy). His research interests focus on media systems and political communication. He serves in the editorial boards of Political Communication, European Journal of Communication, and is editor of the new Italian scholarly journal "Comunicazione Politica".

Diana Mutz is Professor of Political Science and of Journalism and Communication at Ohio State University, currently on leave as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her research interests center on the effects of mass and interpersonal comunication on political attitudes and behaviors. She is the author of numerous journal articles and a recent book entitled Impersonal Influence (Cambridge University Press,1998), which received the APSA Robert E. Lane prize for the best book in political psychology, 1999.

Dr Maggie Scammell is Lecturer in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. Main publications include Designer Politics (1995), On Message (1999) and Media, Journalism and Democracy (forthcoming). Recent articles on political communication and marketing have appeared in journals including Media, culture and Society, European Journal of Marketing and Political Studies.

Philip Schlesinger is Professor of Film and Media Studies and Director of the Stirling Media Research Institute at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He is also Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Adam F.Simon, Assistant Professor, pursues research relevant to political communication. His most recent published piece "New Perspectives and Evidence on Campaign Effects" appeared in the Annual Review of Psychology. His current project addresses the role of deliberation in collective decision-making, especially how communication interacts with identity to influence coalition formation. The design builds social psychological methods into and existing game-theoretic framework known as the "split-the-pie." The project relies on microeconomic theory and terminology, but its dependence on formal mechanisms is tempered by the use of experimental techniques. He was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. His dissertation, "The Winning Message? Candidate Behavior, Campaign Discourse and Democracy" isolates factors responsible for elevating or debasing campaign discourse. The work is predicated on the ideal of dialogue, which means that whenever one candidate raises a subject, their opponent should respond by discussing the same subject. This concept bridges normative discussion of discourse and actual campaign practice, supporting an analysis of the behavior of instrumentally-rational candidates with testable hypotheses. Some formal results are confirmed using experimental and survey data from the 1994 California Gubernatorial race as well as an ongoing study of the U.S. Senate Elections.

David L. Swanson is Professor and Head of Speech Communication and Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and editor of _Political Communication_. The main focus of his work concerns the relationship between politics and the media. His contributions on this subject include _Politics, Media, and Modern Democracy_ (with Mancini, 1996), _New Directions in Political Communication_ (with Nimmo, 1990), and numerous research reports and essays in various journals and volumes in English and in French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Japanese translation. He has held various elected and appointed offices in the International Communication Association, the National (US) Communication Association, and the American Political Science Association, and he chairs the NCA Council on Doctoral Education.

Michael Xenos (MA, Western Washington University, 1998) is a graduate student in the Policical Science department at the University of Washington. His research focuses on media framing as it relates to public deliberation and opinion formation.