Johanna Dunaway received a PhD from Rice University in 2006. She is a professor of political science at Syracuse University and the research director for the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Her areas of research and teaching include news media and political communication, with an emphasis on how the changing media environment is shaping news consumption and political knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Her publications appear in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Political Communication, and Public Opinion Quarterly. Dunaway’s recent books include Home Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization (Cambridge University Press, 2021), coauthored with Joshua P. Darr and Matthew P. Hitt, and News and Democratic Citizens in the Mobile Era (Oxford University Press, 2022), coauthored with Kathleen Searles. Her current book, coauthored with Vin Arceneaux, Martin Johnson, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen, The House that Fox Built? Representation, Political Accountability, and the Rise of Partisan News, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
Dunaway’s project, “Nationalized News Increases Polarization and Weakens Democratic Norms,” will examine the roots and effects of affective polarization, with a particular focus on the role of changing media environments, and how both are tied to antidemocratic behaviors. Specifically, the studies in this project will investigate how the nationalizing news environment contributes to citizens’ negative affect toward out-party elites and members of the mass public, and the conditions under which this form of affective polarization encourages citizens to let these sentiments override their democratic values.
May 2024
