Kathleen Searles
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 4124070 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Kathleen Searles |
| NOMBRES | Kathleen |
| APELLIDO | Searles |
| FIRMA | SEARLES K |
| AFILIACIONES | Louisiana State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8145-9582 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 33 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 289 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 33 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2011 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Understanding the efficacy of online bystander intervention when journalists are the targets
Journalists have distinct needs when it comes to online harassment intervention • Bystander intervention efficacy requires consideration of profession and context • Journalists experiencing online harassment prefer consensual-driven interventions • Journalists experiencing online harassment prefer bystander interventions that account for the context of abuse
Counting on Diversity
Candidate Gender, Campaign Appeals, and Voter Support in Judicial Elections
Gendered Expectations
Are women legislators punished for not supporting women’s substantive policy interests? We test these gendered expectations. We marshal an original content analysis of cable news coverage and two survey experiments testing voters’ assessment of hypothetical legislators on the issues of abortion and equal pay. We find that voters rate both women and men legislators positively for supporting women’s issues and negatively evaluate legislators of bot…
U.S. Election Day Coverage of Voting Processes
Scrolling headlines and clicking stories
Scrollability
Most major platforms and news portals use the feed approach to information display, which offers people the ability to engage in continuous scrolling. This affordance, "scrollability," is an understudied feature that changes how people consume news. The endless scroll presents opportunities to monetize attention for advertisers, and a seemingly bottomless supply of headlines for news consumers. Moreover, more people report scrolling headlines tha…
Information processing on smartphones in public versus private
People increasingly turn to news on mobile devices, often while out and about, attending to daily tasks. Yet, we know little about whether attention to and learning from information on a mobile differs by the setting of use. This study builds on Multiple Resource Theory (Wickens, 1984) and the Resource Competition Framework (Oulasvirta et al., 2005) to compare visual attention to a dynamic newsfeed, varying only the setting: private or public. We…
Is news for men
News avoidance, particularly among women, raises potential challenges for democracy. While research shows audiences don’t penalize women reporters or the outlets that employ them, we don’t know whether the presence of women in the newsroom affects such avoidance behaviors, particularly for women audiences. Additionally, the news may communicate gender to the audience in other ways beyond ascriptive characteristics of the reporter. We ask, do repo…
Partisan media effects beyond one-shot experimental designs
Previous study demonstrates that partisans perceive in-party news outlets as fair, and out-party news outlets as unfair. However, much of this study relies on one-shot designs. We create an ecologically valid design that randomly assigns participants to news feeds within a week-long online news portal where the balance of in-party and out-party news outlets has been manipulated. We find that sustained exposure to a feed that features out-party ne…
Notes from the Editors
veryone knows that social media can be an "outrage machine": a dark hole of blistering criticism and rejection that fosters "compare and despair" syndrome by inviting us to judge our inner selves against others' Instagram pics (Haidt and Twenge 2021). However, it also has the potential to connect people in new and dynamic ways, helping to build community across distance and difference
Look Who’s Writing
Women reporters are underrepresented in newsrooms and assigned to gender-stereotypic roles, but to what effect? To better understand the role of gender in news making, this article utilizes three survey experiments to investigate the effects of journalists’ gender on reader perceptions toward reporter credibility, outlet credibility, and the relevance of news to them. We find little evidence that readers doubt the credibility of a reporter or a n…
Don’t read the comments
Recent work suggests women authors experience more abuse in online comments than men, but we do not know whether these abusive comments affect people’s perceptions. Given renewed interest in the experience of women online, we ask: does exposure to abusive comments affect perceptions of women authors’ credibility? And does this penalty extend to the outlet? To answer these questions, we employed a survey experiment which manipulated exposure to an…
Collision with Collusion
President Donald Trump faced substantial scandal coverage early in his presidency. Can these stories about presidential controversies change the opinions of Trump’s fellow Republicans, or are the efforts of the news media to inform partisans about prominent issues futile? Past research on partisan reactions to major political scandals were confounded by problems with self-reported media use and single-shot experimental treatments. We address thes…
News Attention in a Mobile Era
Mobile access to the Internet is changing the way people consume information, yet we know little about the effects of this shift on news consumption. Consuming news is key to democratic citizenship, but is attention to news the same in a mobile environment? We argue that attention to news on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones is not the same as attention to news for those on computers. Our research uses eye tracking in two lab experim…
New Approaches to Method and Measurement in the Study of Political Communication Effects
In 2008 Bennett and Iyengar (2008) called on us to rethink the relevance of existing theoretical paradigms amidst a rapidly changing communication environment. Building on this call, Holbert, Garre
Crime News Effects and Democratic Accountability
Publics hold chief executives uniquely responsible for national well-being, and they learn about national conditions through news. But when news disproportionately covers problems, what happens to democratic accountability? Here, we experimentally test how leader approval changes when crime loses prominence in news for a sustained period. We create an online news environment coding real news in real time, then experimentally filter news for natio…
Media Coverage and Public Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court
When citizens believe the U.S. Supreme Court makes decisions in an insincere or politicized manner, their specific support for the institution can decline. The Court's relative aversion to publicity means the media are the primary source of information about its decisions. We design a survey experiment that varies the type of coverage—game frame or principled. Game-frame coverage reduces agreement with and acceptance of the decision discussed. We…
Partisan Media, Electoral Predictions, and Wishful Thinking
Public predictions about the results of forthcoming elections have important consequences for political campaigns and support for governmental institutions. This research examines whether partisan media facilitate wishful thinking, which occurs when candidate preference biases electoral predictions. We use two experiments to test whether partisan news exposure increases wishful thinking about election outcomes. Our results suggest that when parti…
How Not to Get Ratioed and Other Advice for the Savvy Graduate Mentor
While political communication scholars are attuned to the ways changing information communication technology affects politics, we are often slower to think about how such changes affect our discipl
The Effects of Men’s and Women’s Voices in Political Advertising
Campaigns disproportionately choose men to voice their political ads, but it is not clear that men’s voices are more credible or better able to persuade an audience. We employ experimental data and novel survey data to test theoretical expectations about the circumstances under which men’s and women’s voices might be more or less effective, specifically looking at how gender association of the ad issues and gender of the message recipient shape t…
Women Also Know Stuff
Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed…
Dog Whistle Politics
For Whom the Poll Airs
Journal Article For Whom the Poll Airs: Comparing Poll Results to Television Poll Coverage Get access Kathleen Searles, Kathleen Searles 1Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. Martha Humphries Ginn is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA. Jona…
It's a Mad, Mad World
Recent research has uncovered a dynamic role for emotion in political decision-making. Anger in particular has increased in importance as scholars uncover its role in motivating participation and partisanship. One method for examining these effects is to use an induction to invoke an emotion, though such techniques are often limited to the laboratory. We discuss pertinent psychological research on induction, test several methods, and make practic…
It's My Campaign I'll Cry if I Want to
Recent research in the area of campaign advertising suggests that emotional appeals can influence political attitudes, electoral choices and decision‐making processes. Yet is there any evidence that candidates use emotional appeals strategically during campaigns? Is there a pattern to their use? For instance, are fear appeals used primarily late in the campaign by trailing candidates in order to get voters to rethink their choices? And are enthus…
Media Coverage and Public Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court
When citizens believe the U.S. Supreme Court makes decisions in an insincere or politicized manner, their specific support for the institution can decline. The Court's relative aversion to publicity means the media are the primary source of information about its decisions. We design a survey experiment that varies the type of coverage—game frame or principled. Game-frame coverage reduces agreement with and acceptance of the decision discussed. We…
Who Let the (Attack) Dogs Out? New Evidence for Partisan Media Effects
Journal Article Who Let the (Attack) Dogs Out? New Evidence for Partisan Media Effects Get access Glen Smith, Glen Smith Glen Smith is an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Georgia, Oakwood, GA, USA. Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor at Georgia Regents University, Augusta, GA, USA. The authors thank the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Annenberg Public Policy Center for use of their data. Sear…
News Attention in a Mobile Era
Mobile access to the Internet is changing the way people consume information, yet we know little about the effects of this shift on news consumption. Consuming news is key to democratic citizenship, but is attention to news the same in a mobile environment? We argue that attention to news on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones is not the same as attention to news for those on computers. Our research uses eye tracking in two lab experim…
Partisan Media, Electoral Predictions, and Wishful Thinking
Public predictions about the results of forthcoming elections have important consequences for political campaigns and support for governmental institutions. This research examines whether partisan media facilitate wishful thinking, which occurs when candidate preference biases electoral predictions. We use two experiments to test whether partisan news exposure increases wishful thinking about election outcomes. Our results suggest that when parti…
For Whom the Poll Airs
Journal Article For Whom the Poll Airs: Comparing Poll Results to Television Poll Coverage Get access Kathleen Searles, Kathleen Searles 1Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. Martha Humphries Ginn is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA. Jona…
In a Different Voice? Explaining the Use of Men and Women as Voice-Over Announcers in Political Advertising
We draw on a comprehensive database of American political advertising and television audience profile data to investigate the ways in which gender influences choices about the use of voice-overs in political advertising. Our findings suggest that although men voice the vast majority of political ads, campaigns do strategically choose the sex of the voice-over announcer and that it systematically varies with candidate characteristics, ad tone, and…
Fair and Balanced News or a Difference of Opinion? Why Opinion Shows Matter for Media Effects
In this article, we examine both the content and effects of opinion shows during the 2008 presidential election. First, a content analysis shows that opinion shows devote most of their attention to attacking the opposition candidate, rather than praising the like-minded candidate. Second, analyses of panel data show that exposure to opinion shows made viewers less (more) favorable toward the opposition (like-minded) candidate. Finally, we use ove…
Collision with Collusion
President Donald Trump faced substantial scandal coverage early in his presidency. Can these stories about presidential controversies change the opinions of Trump’s fellow Republicans, or are the efforts of the news media to inform partisans about prominent issues futile? Past research on partisan reactions to major political scandals were confounded by problems with self-reported media use and single-shot experimental treatments. We address thes…
It's a Mad, Mad World
Recent research has uncovered a dynamic role for emotion in political decision-making. Anger in particular has increased in importance as scholars uncover its role in motivating participation and partisanship. One method for examining these effects is to use an induction to invoke an emotion, though such techniques are often limited to the laboratory. We discuss pertinent psychological research on induction, test several methods, and make practic…
Exploring the validity of electronic newspaper databases
Do electronic newspaper databases contain all of the stories that appear in the print edition? And does this depend on the database used? To explore these questions, we collected print copies of newspapers from cities across the USA and Canada. We compared coverage of two topics in these newspapers with the coverage obtained from keyword searches in three electronic newspaper databases. We conclude that the stories obtained through electronic sea…
Scrollability
Most major platforms and news portals use the feed approach to information display, which offers people the ability to engage in continuous scrolling. This affordance, "scrollability," is an understudied feature that changes how people consume news. The endless scroll presents opportunities to monetize attention for advertisers, and a seemingly bottomless supply of headlines for news consumers. Moreover, more people report scrolling headlines tha…
Partisan media effects beyond one-shot experimental designs
Previous study demonstrates that partisans perceive in-party news outlets as fair, and out-party news outlets as unfair. However, much of this study relies on one-shot designs. We create an ecologically valid design that randomly assigns participants to news feeds within a week-long online news portal where the balance of in-party and out-party news outlets has been manipulated. We find that sustained exposure to a feed that features out-party ne…
Predicting Presidential Appearances During Midterm Elections
Due to limitations in both time and resources, presidents who wish to assist their copartisans’ electoral endeavors must make strategic choices when offering their assistance. Much research has attempted to explain why presidents devote their limited resources during a midterm election, yet we know little about the factors that lead to a presidential visit to a particular congressional district. Our research addresses this gap in the literature b…
Look Who’s Writing
Women reporters are underrepresented in newsrooms and assigned to gender-stereotypic roles, but to what effect? To better understand the role of gender in news making, this article utilizes three survey experiments to investigate the effects of journalists’ gender on reader perceptions toward reporter credibility, outlet credibility, and the relevance of news to them. We find little evidence that readers doubt the credibility of a reporter or a n…
Candidate Gender, Campaign Appeals, and Voter Support in Judicial Elections
Crime News Effects and Democratic Accountability
Publics hold chief executives uniquely responsible for national well-being, and they learn about national conditions through news. But when news disproportionately covers problems, what happens to democratic accountability? Here, we experimentally test how leader approval changes when crime loses prominence in news for a sustained period. We create an online news environment coding real news in real time, then experimentally filter news for natio…
How Not to Get Ratioed and Other Advice for the Savvy Graduate Mentor
While political communication scholars are attuned to the ways changing information communication technology affects politics, we are often slower to think about how such changes affect our discipl
The Effects of Men’s and Women’s Voices in Political Advertising
Campaigns disproportionately choose men to voice their political ads, but it is not clear that men’s voices are more credible or better able to persuade an audience. We employ experimental data and novel survey data to test theoretical expectations about the circumstances under which men’s and women’s voices might be more or less effective, specifically looking at how gender association of the ad issues and gender of the message recipient shape t…
Women Also Know Stuff
Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed…
Is news for men
News avoidance, particularly among women, raises potential challenges for democracy. While research shows audiences don’t penalize women reporters or the outlets that employ them, we don’t know whether the presence of women in the newsroom affects such avoidance behaviors, particularly for women audiences. Additionally, the news may communicate gender to the audience in other ways beyond ascriptive characteristics of the reporter. We ask, do repo…
Gendered Expectations
Are women legislators punished for not supporting women’s substantive policy interests? We test these gendered expectations. We marshal an original content analysis of cable news coverage and two survey experiments testing voters’ assessment of hypothetical legislators on the issues of abortion and equal pay. We find that voters rate both women and men legislators positively for supporting women’s issues and negatively evaluate legislators of bot…
Scrolling headlines and clicking stories
Information processing on smartphones in public versus private
People increasingly turn to news on mobile devices, often while out and about, attending to daily tasks. Yet, we know little about whether attention to and learning from information on a mobile differs by the setting of use. This study builds on Multiple Resource Theory (Wickens, 1984) and the Resource Competition Framework (Oulasvirta et al., 2005) to compare visual attention to a dynamic newsfeed, varying only the setting: private or public. We…
Exploring the validity of electronic newspaper databases
Do electronic newspaper databases contain all of the stories that appear in the print edition? And does this depend on the database used? To explore these questions, we collected print copies of newspapers from cities across the USA and Canada. We compared coverage of two topics in these newspapers with the coverage obtained from keyword searches in three electronic newspaper databases. We conclude that the stories obtained through electronic sea…
It's My Campaign I'll Cry if I Want to
Recent research in the area of campaign advertising suggests that emotional appeals can influence political attitudes, electoral choices and decision‐making processes. Yet is there any evidence that candidates use emotional appeals strategically during campaigns? Is there a pattern to their use? For instance, are fear appeals used primarily late in the campaign by trailing candidates in order to get voters to rethink their choices? And are enthus…
Fair and Balanced News or a Difference of Opinion? Why Opinion Shows Matter for Media Effects
In this article, we examine both the content and effects of opinion shows during the 2008 presidential election. First, a content analysis shows that opinion shows devote most of their attention to attacking the opposition candidate, rather than praising the like-minded candidate. Second, analyses of panel data show that exposure to opinion shows made viewers less (more) favorable toward the opposition (like-minded) candidate. Finally, we use ove…
Predicting Presidential Appearances During Midterm Elections
Due to limitations in both time and resources, presidents who wish to assist their copartisans’ electoral endeavors must make strategic choices when offering their assistance. Much research has attempted to explain why presidents devote their limited resources during a midterm election, yet we know little about the factors that lead to a presidential visit to a particular congressional district. Our research addresses this gap in the literature b…
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New Appointments
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Who Let the (Attack) Dogs Out? New Evidence for Partisan Media Effects
Journal Article Who Let the (Attack) Dogs Out? New Evidence for Partisan Media Effects Get access Glen Smith, Glen Smith Glen Smith is an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Georgia, Oakwood, GA, USA. Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor at Georgia Regents University, Augusta, GA, USA. The authors thank the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Annenberg Public Policy Center for use of their data. Sear…
It's a Mad, Mad World
Recent research has uncovered a dynamic role for emotion in political decision-making. Anger in particular has increased in importance as scholars uncover its role in motivating participation and partisanship. One method for examining these effects is to use an induction to invoke an emotion, though such techniques are often limited to the laboratory. We discuss pertinent psychological research on induction, test several methods, and make practic…
In a Different Voice? Explaining the Use of Men and Women as Voice-Over Announcers in Political Advertising
We draw on a comprehensive database of American political advertising and television audience profile data to investigate the ways in which gender influences choices about the use of voice-overs in political advertising. Our findings suggest that although men voice the vast majority of political ads, campaigns do strategically choose the sex of the voice-over announcer and that it systematically varies with candidate characteristics, ad tone, and…
Dog Whistle Politics
For Whom the Poll Airs
Journal Article For Whom the Poll Airs: Comparing Poll Results to Television Poll Coverage Get access Kathleen Searles, Kathleen Searles 1Kathleen Searles is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. Martha Humphries Ginn is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA. Jona…
The Effects of Men’s and Women’s Voices in Political Advertising
Campaigns disproportionately choose men to voice their political ads, but it is not clear that men’s voices are more credible or better able to persuade an audience. We employ experimental data and novel survey data to test theoretical expectations about the circumstances under which men’s and women’s voices might be more or less effective, specifically looking at how gender association of the ad issues and gender of the message recipient shape t…
Women Also Know Stuff
Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed…
News Attention in a Mobile Era
Mobile access to the Internet is changing the way people consume information, yet we know little about the effects of this shift on news consumption. Consuming news is key to democratic citizenship, but is attention to news the same in a mobile environment? We argue that attention to news on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones is not the same as attention to news for those on computers. Our research uses eye tracking in two lab experim…
New Approaches to Method and Measurement in the Study of Political Communication Effects
In 2008 Bennett and Iyengar (2008) called on us to rethink the relevance of existing theoretical paradigms amidst a rapidly changing communication environment. Building on this call, Holbert, Garre
Crime News Effects and Democratic Accountability
Publics hold chief executives uniquely responsible for national well-being, and they learn about national conditions through news. But when news disproportionately covers problems, what happens to democratic accountability? Here, we experimentally test how leader approval changes when crime loses prominence in news for a sustained period. We create an online news environment coding real news in real time, then experimentally filter news for natio…
Media Coverage and Public Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court
When citizens believe the U.S. Supreme Court makes decisions in an insincere or politicized manner, their specific support for the institution can decline. The Court's relative aversion to publicity means the media are the primary source of information about its decisions. We design a survey experiment that varies the type of coverage—game frame or principled. Game-frame coverage reduces agreement with and acceptance of the decision discussed. We…
Partisan Media, Electoral Predictions, and Wishful Thinking
Public predictions about the results of forthcoming elections have important consequences for political campaigns and support for governmental institutions. This research examines whether partisan media facilitate wishful thinking, which occurs when candidate preference biases electoral predictions. We use two experiments to test whether partisan news exposure increases wishful thinking about election outcomes. Our results suggest that when parti…
How Not to Get Ratioed and Other Advice for the Savvy Graduate Mentor
While political communication scholars are attuned to the ways changing information communication technology affects politics, we are often slower to think about how such changes affect our discipl
Collision with Collusion
President Donald Trump faced substantial scandal coverage early in his presidency. Can these stories about presidential controversies change the opinions of Trump’s fellow Republicans, or are the efforts of the news media to inform partisans about prominent issues futile? Past research on partisan reactions to major political scandals were confounded by problems with self-reported media use and single-shot experimental treatments. We address thes…
Don’t read the comments
Recent work suggests women authors experience more abuse in online comments than men, but we do not know whether these abusive comments affect people’s perceptions. Given renewed interest in the experience of women online, we ask: does exposure to abusive comments affect perceptions of women authors’ credibility? And does this penalty extend to the outlet? To answer these questions, we employed a survey experiment which manipulated exposure to an…
Notes from the Editors
veryone knows that social media can be an "outrage machine": a dark hole of blistering criticism and rejection that fosters "compare and despair" syndrome by inviting us to judge our inner selves against others' Instagram pics (Haidt and Twenge 2021). However, it also has the potential to connect people in new and dynamic ways, helping to build community across distance and difference
Look Who’s Writing
Women reporters are underrepresented in newsrooms and assigned to gender-stereotypic roles, but to what effect? To better understand the role of gender in news making, this article utilizes three survey experiments to investigate the effects of journalists’ gender on reader perceptions toward reporter credibility, outlet credibility, and the relevance of news to them. We find little evidence that readers doubt the credibility of a reporter or a n…
Information processing on smartphones in public versus private
People increasingly turn to news on mobile devices, often while out and about, attending to daily tasks. Yet, we know little about whether attention to and learning from information on a mobile differs by the setting of use. This study builds on Multiple Resource Theory (Wickens, 1984) and the Resource Competition Framework (Oulasvirta et al., 2005) to compare visual attention to a dynamic newsfeed, varying only the setting: private or public. We…
Is news for men
News avoidance, particularly among women, raises potential challenges for democracy. While research shows audiences don’t penalize women reporters or the outlets that employ them, we don’t know whether the presence of women in the newsroom affects such avoidance behaviors, particularly for women audiences. Additionally, the news may communicate gender to the audience in other ways beyond ascriptive characteristics of the reporter. We ask, do repo…
Political science (26 obras) · Law (17 obras) · Advertising (16 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Politics (15 obras) · Psychology (15 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Business (14 obras) · Computer Science (12 obras) · Social Media and Politics (12 obras)