David Niven
Biographic Data
| ID | 602171 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Niven |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Niven |
| SIGNATURE | NIVEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cincinnati |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6167-3714 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 424 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The triple gender effect on death penalty prosecutions
Studies examining the intersection of gender and the death penalty have identified gender effects in case outcomes. I build upon that previous research to simultaneously consider the gender of the defendant, victim, and prosecutor in more than 14,000 capital case prosecutions in Texas. I find the most death sentence-oriented gender combination (male prosecutor, female victim, and male defendant) produces death sentences at a vastly higher rate th…
The power of party to help voters overcome a participation obstacle in the United States
Can partisanship itself – independent of any party mobilizing activity – help voters overcome participatory obstacles? Challenges for evaluating this question in normal circumstances abound as parties mobilize voters specifically based on their partisanship and in order to counter participatory hurdles they may face. Here, taking advantage of a quasi-experimental circumstance in which a targeted mobilizing effort was not feasible, I show that par…
Personal belief versus universal truth
What role do religious themes play when state legislators in the United States debate the death penalty?We analyze floor speeches delivered during debate on death penalty repeal bills in three states to systematically consider who speaks of religion and what they say.We find religion is discussed in about one in seven death penalty speeches, with advocates and opponents of capital punishment referencing religion roughly proportionally.Catholic le…
Aversive racism at the ballot box
Research on the response of white voters to African American candidates has produced decidedly mixed results. I argue that methodological limitations are a major source of this perplexing array of findings and that a field experiment may help shed more light on the topic than is possible in laboratory experiments, surveys, or in post-election data analysis. Here, a field experiment embedded in two low salience school board elections in Columbus, …
The racial disparity in the Major League Baseball draft, 1965–2001
Racism has been a central element in the history of Major League Baseball. And yet, there is an incredibly rich history of African American baseball in the United States encompassing the Negro Leagues and the celebrated era when rigid racial exclusions from Major League Baseball finally fell giving way in quick succession to the transformative arrival of Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron. African American participation on Major League …
The prosecutor gender gap in Texas death penalty cases
Objective We examine the degree to which sentencing patterns in Texas capital cases vary by the gender of the prosecutor. In so doing, we explore the possibility that a factor unrelated to the crime influences whether the death penalty is sought and whether it is imposed. Methods Across more than 14,000 capital cases prosecuted in Texas between 1978 and 2018, we use bivariate data and logistic regression to explore the relationship between prosec…
Stereotypes versus self-interest
The boundaries of confusion
Objectives We introduce a new, stable, and reliable measure of gerrymandering based on the number of unnecessary overlapping state House districts within U.S. House districts. We then test for the presence of racial disparities by considering the relative number of unnecessary overlapping districts in majority‐white and majority–minority areas. Methods We utilize a data set encompassing maps in place in the 2012–2022 period from all 35 states wit…
Who Says Shut Up and Dribble? Race and the Response to Athletes’ Political Activism
Policing Polling Places in the United States
Can the presence of police outside a polling place deter African American voting in the United States? To address this question, this study compares voter turnout at polling places in a 2017 U.S. Senate special election in Alabama based on whether police were present. In short, the presence of police is associated with a 32% reduction in African American participation. That is, if the African American population is 10% of a precinct’s registered …
Philadelphia battlefields
Philadelphia Battlefields dissects the origins of successful insurgent campaigns in Philadelphia in a book that is equal parts analysis and call to action. Running without the Democratic Party’s en
Are Individuals Harmed by Gerrymandering? Examining Access to Congressional District Offices
Objective We consider proximity and access to the district offices of members of Congress to explore whether gerrymandering affects individuals’ capacity to be heard and thus impairs their representation. Methods In a study of six states, we conduct more than 123 million distance measurements to identify residents whose closest district office is in the wrong congressional district. Based on survey results, we then estimate the likelihood that su…
Who challenges disparities in capital punishment
In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court tasked legislatures, rather than courts, with redressing racial disparities in capital punishment. Elected officials must then decide to amend disparate death penalty procedures. Analyzing floor debates, we explore why legislators make arguments for racial disparity or fairness in deliberations of death penalty reforms. Results suggest views on race and the death penalty are products of partisanship, consti…
Killing with Prejudice
Dred Scott v. Sandford. Plessy v. Ferguson. Infamous Supreme Court cases infected by the stain of racism and renounced by history. In Killing with Prejudice, R. J. Maratea makes the case that McCle
Stifling Workplace Activism
Objective Tracking the future contract status of NFL players affords a rare opportunity to test whether there were repercussions for participating in the 2017 national anthem protest and whether more vulnerable players were right to be wary of the owners’ wrath. Methods A sample of NFL players with comparable performance is used to compare how protesters and nonprotesters were treated in their next contract. Results Data reveal distinct differenc…
Who Reveals, Who Conceals
Do women candidates in the United States more openly provide the specific details of their policy preferences and make clear their political ideology? Previous research supports all manner of conflicting expectations regarding gender and campaign communication strategies. Here, with an eye toward offering evidence on the degree to which candidates make clear their issue positions, we consider how more than 1,300 candidates running in the 2016 ele…
The Effect of Economic Vulnerability on Protest Participation in the National Football League
Objectives What distinguishes between National Football League (NFL) players who participated in protests during the National Anthem and those who did not? Does the finding of a personal vulnerability constraint in high‐risk activism apply to this relatively elite population? Methods Protest participation during 2017 was determined for every NFL player, along with several variables pertaining to their performance, compensation, and the political …
Can Republican African Americans Win African American Votes? A Field Experiment
In the face of its 2012 defeat and looming demographic trends that did not bode well for the party’s future presidential candidates, the Republican National Committee officially declared its intention to recruit more African American candidates for office. But will fielding more African American candidates likely attract more African American votes for Republicans? Here, I employ a field experiment using real candidates and real votes cast in two…
An Interesting Bias
Most rigorous studies conclude that there is no consistent partisan or ideological bias in the mainstream American news media. This suggests a natural but little-asked question: Why isn't there more bias in the media? A year spent working as a journalist suggests a possible answer: Advancing a political perspective does not help secure a place on the front page. Instead, the core incentive for a journalist is to be interesting. Interesting work t…
Bush's War
This is not a book overly burdened with qualifications and caveats. Based on his review of media coverage of five President George W. Bush speeches in the aftermath of 9/11, and the wars in Iraq an
Throwing Your Hat Out of the Ring
Candidate dropouts are a crucial and understudied population; they represent a significant source for increasing women's candidacies and addressing the gender imbalance in office. Survey evidence demonstrates that women are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is strong, while men are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is weak. Are women more likely to drop out of an election race than are men? If so,…
A Field Experiment on the Effects of Negative Campaign Mail on Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election
This field experiment is used to expose a random sample of voters in a 2003 mayoral race to various pieces of negative direct mail advertising. Exposure to the negative advertising stimulus improved turnout overall about 6 percent over that of the control group. Results show that different topics and amounts of negative advertising had different effects on turnout. The results suggest that alarm bells sounded by some previous research and by publ…
Race, Quarterbacks, and the Media
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh made headlines in 2003 when he appeared on a cable sports program and claimed the media were biased in favor of African American quarterbacks. Using a sample made up of the seven African American starting quarterbacks in the National Football League matched with seven White quarterbacks with comparable statistics, this study considers whether newspaper coverage was slanted by race. The data, including more than 10,000…
Silent Voices
Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America. By Adam J. Berinsky. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 224p. $35.00. Polls, Adam Berinsky warns, are flawed. The source of this flaw is what he labels “exclusion bias,” defined as “the exclusion of the preferences of the sometimes sizable portion of the public who say they ‘don't know’ where they stand on the issues of the day” (p. 2
The Politics of Injustice
When the Freedom Riders sought an end to segregation in 1961, they had little support from a supposedly liberal administration in Washington. In his efforts to hold a centrist position and with an eye toward re-election, President John F. Kennedy largely ignored and even tried to hamper the efforts of these civil rights activists. While most historians accept JFK s moderation on civil rights as politically prudent, David Niven now argues that Ken…
Party Elites and Women Candidates
Using a four state survey of party county chairs and locally elected women, this study finds support for the notion that potential women candidates are subject to bias in recruitment that hinders the cause of electing more women to state legislatures and Congress. It is hypothesized that bias is most likely due to one of two processes: one, the outgroup effect where negative evaluations of women as candidates are predicated on their lack of surfa…
Throwing Your Hat Out of the Ring
Candidate dropouts are a crucial and understudied population; they represent a significant source for increasing women's candidacies and addressing the gender imbalance in office. Survey evidence demonstrates that women are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is strong, while men are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is weak. Are women more likely to drop out of an election race than are men? If so,…
Silent Voices
Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America. By Adam J. Berinsky. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 224p. $35.00. Polls, Adam Berinsky warns, are flawed. The source of this flaw is what he labels “exclusion bias,” defined as “the exclusion of the preferences of the sometimes sizable portion of the public who say they ‘don't know’ where they stand on the issues of the day” (p. 2
The Mobilization Solution? Face-to-Face Contact and Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election
In the ongoing quest to understand and potentially improve voter turnout, many analysts have focused their attention on political mobilization effects. Some scholars suggest that the failure to engage in widespread personal mobilization efforts has contributed to declining turnout and that a recommitment to mobilization by parties, candidates, and others would reverse the trend. This research explores the effects of face-to-face mobilization effo…
Do Women and Men in Congress Cultivate Different Images? Evidence from Congressional Web Sites
According to previous studies, women in the U.S. Congress are often cast by the media and by voters as quite distinct from men, with a unique focus on women's issues and an outsider approach to governing. Contrary to the media's depiction and voters' expectations, however, an analysis of Congressional web sites reveals that women members, just as men in Congress do, portray themselves as having diverse interests and participating zealously in the…
The Political Content of Late Night Comedy
During the 2000 national election season, there was unprecedented attention paid by the media, and by presidential campaigns, to the political content of late night comedy shows such as the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Late Show with David Letterman. Focusing on the more than thirteen thousand jokes about U.S. political figures from 1996 to 2000 on late night comedy talk shows, this study explores the choice of targets and subjects of polit…
The Limits of Mobilization
Bias in the News
Support is surfacing in the popular media, and in some cases the scholarly press, for allegations that the media's perspective is tinted by partisanship and negativity. Despite great attention to these matters, analyses subjecting these claims to objective testing, using meaningful baselines with which to compare coverage, have been lacking. By studying coverage of unemployment, an issue for which outcomes are known and quantified, this research …
A Field Experiment on the Effects of Negative Campaign Mail on Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election
This field experiment is used to expose a random sample of voters in a 2003 mayoral race to various pieces of negative direct mail advertising. Exposure to the negative advertising stimulus improved turnout overall about 6 percent over that of the control group. Results show that different topics and amounts of negative advertising had different effects on turnout. The results suggest that alarm bells sounded by some previous research and by publ…
A Fair Test of Media Bias
Popular sentiment, political actors, and even scholarly work suggest the media are biased. Yet, work on media bias targeted against such varied political entities as Republicans, African Americans, and women does not provide a fair baseline with which to compare coverage. That is, previous research lacks a comparison of coverage focused on politicians who have produced the same record, and who therefore should receive equitable coverage. This stu…
The Other Side of Optimism
How Does She Have Time for Kids and Congress?”
According to previous studies, women political leaders often are cast by the media as focused narrowly on matters of significance to their gender, and as being less weighty players in government than their male counterparts. This research explores the degree to which the press offices of women members of Congress perceive this to be the case, and the degree to which women representatives' communication efforts contribute to this pattern of covera…
The Mobilization Calendar
Recent studies hold out political mobilization as the possible solution to low and declining voter turnout. This research explores the effects of face-to-face mobilization efforts that, in the course of 7 months, reached more than 4,500 registered voters in a Florida State House primary race. Controlling for their past voting history, the mobilization effort did increase turnout by about 10% of the electorate. However, the effects were dependent …
Party elites and women candidates
Who Says Shut Up and Dribble? Race and the Response to Athletes’ Political Activism
Stereotypes in the News
The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics - Volume 5, Number 1, Winter 2000
What's Newt Doing in People Magazine?” The Changing Effect of National Prominence in Congressional Elections
Who Reveals, Who Conceals
Do women candidates in the United States more openly provide the specific details of their policy preferences and make clear their political ideology? Previous research supports all manner of conflicting expectations regarding gender and campaign communication strategies. Here, with an eye toward offering evidence on the degree to which candidates make clear their issue positions, we consider how more than 1,300 candidates running in the 2016 ele…
Stereotypes in the News
According to previous studies, African-American political leaders are often cast by the media as being both narrowly focused on matters of race and less influential than their white counterparts in the legislative process. This article explores the degree to which the press offices of African-American members of Congress perceive this to be the case and the degree to which African-American representatives contribute to this pattern of coverage. I…
Shaping the Congressional Debate on the Gulf War
Conventional legislative research fails to capture some of the motivating factors behind congressional behavior in foreign policy. One major factor that scholars have ignored is the way members' frame an issue. The results presented here on the vote to approve the Gulf War suggest that the choice of frames is a significant part of the process of legislative decision making. To wit, as members utilize more extreme frames they become less likely to…
Are Individuals Harmed by Gerrymandering? Examining Access to Congressional District Offices
Objective We consider proximity and access to the district offices of members of Congress to explore whether gerrymandering affects individuals’ capacity to be heard and thus impairs their representation. Methods In a study of six states, we conduct more than 123 million distance measurements to identify residents whose closest district office is in the wrong congressional district. Based on survey results, we then estimate the likelihood that su…
Stifling Workplace Activism
Objective Tracking the future contract status of NFL players affords a rare opportunity to test whether there were repercussions for participating in the 2017 national anthem protest and whether more vulnerable players were right to be wary of the owners’ wrath. Methods A sample of NFL players with comparable performance is used to compare how protesters and nonprotesters were treated in their next contract. Results Data reveal distinct differenc…
The Effect of Economic Vulnerability on Protest Participation in the National Football League
Objectives What distinguishes between National Football League (NFL) players who participated in protests during the National Anthem and those who did not? Does the finding of a personal vulnerability constraint in high‐risk activism apply to this relatively elite population? Methods Protest participation during 2017 was determined for every NFL player, along with several variables pertaining to their performance, compensation, and the political …
The boundaries of confusion
Objectives We introduce a new, stable, and reliable measure of gerrymandering based on the number of unnecessary overlapping state House districts within U.S. House districts. We then test for the presence of racial disparities by considering the relative number of unnecessary overlapping districts in majority‐white and majority–minority areas. Methods We utilize a data set encompassing maps in place in the 2012–2022 period from all 35 states wit…
An Interesting Bias
Most rigorous studies conclude that there is no consistent partisan or ideological bias in the mainstream American news media. This suggests a natural but little-asked question: Why isn't there more bias in the media? A year spent working as a journalist suggests a possible answer: Advancing a political perspective does not help secure a place on the front page. Instead, the core incentive for a journalist is to be interesting. Interesting work t…
Shaping the Congressional Debate on the Gulf War
Conventional legislative research fails to capture some of the motivating factors behind congressional behavior in foreign policy. One major factor that scholars have ignored is the way members' frame an issue. The results presented here on the vote to approve the Gulf War suggest that the choice of frames is a significant part of the process of legislative decision making. To wit, as members utilize more extreme frames they become less likely to…
Party Elites and Women Candidates
Using a four state survey of party county chairs and locally elected women, this study finds support for the notion that potential women candidates are subject to bias in recruitment that hinders the cause of electing more women to state legislatures and Congress. It is hypothesized that bias is most likely due to one of two processes: one, the outgroup effect where negative evaluations of women as candidates are predicated on their lack of surfa…
Party elites and women candidates
What's Newt Doing in People Magazine?” The Changing Effect of National Prominence in Congressional Elections
Stereotypes in the News
According to previous studies, African-American political leaders are often cast by the media as being both narrowly focused on matters of race and less influential than their white counterparts in the legislative process. This article explores the degree to which the press offices of African-American members of Congress perceive this to be the case and the degree to which African-American representatives contribute to this pattern of coverage. I…
Stereotypes in the News
The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics - Volume 5, Number 1, Winter 2000
The Other Side of Optimism
Bias in the News
Support is surfacing in the popular media, and in some cases the scholarly press, for allegations that the media's perspective is tinted by partisanship and negativity. Despite great attention to these matters, analyses subjecting these claims to objective testing, using meaningful baselines with which to compare coverage, have been lacking. By studying coverage of unemployment, an issue for which outcomes are known and quantified, this research …
How Does She Have Time for Kids and Congress?”
According to previous studies, women political leaders often are cast by the media as focused narrowly on matters of significance to their gender, and as being less weighty players in government than their male counterparts. This research explores the degree to which the press offices of women members of Congress perceive this to be the case, and the degree to which women representatives' communication efforts contribute to this pattern of covera…
How does she have time for kids and congress?” Views on gender and media coverage from house offices
According to previous studies, women political leaders often are cast by the media as focused narrowly on matters of significance to their gender, and as being less weighty players in government than their male counterparts. This research explores the degree to which the press offices of women members of Congress perceive this to be the case, and the degree to which women representatives' communication efforts contribute to this pattern of covera…
Do Women and Men in Congress Cultivate Different Images? Evidence from Congressional Web Sites
According to previous studies, women in the U.S. Congress are often cast by the media and by voters as quite distinct from men, with a unique focus on women's issues and an outsider approach to governing. Contrary to the media's depiction and voters' expectations, however, an analysis of Congressional web sites reveals that women members, just as men in Congress do, portray themselves as having diverse interests and participating zealously in the…
The Limits of Mobilization
Tilt
Nine in ten Americans believe the media are biased. Trust in journalists ranks beneath that in lawyers, and even the media themselves regularly portray their own industry as slanted toward Democrats and liberals. These perceptions, however, do not coincide with reality, as David Niven reveals in his bold new take on an often-debated subject.Tilt? The Search for Media Biaspresents the first comprehensive review of the charges, the evidence, and th…
Bolstering an Illusory Majority
Objective . Researchers have found a distinct difference between expressed support for the death penalty (which garners a majority of Americans) and expressed preference for the death penalty over other sentences (which attracts only a minority). Despite the strength of this finding in academic circles, the media tend to cover the death penalty as if it were indisputably favored by a majority of Americans. This article tests the effect of this di…
The Mobilization Calendar
Recent studies hold out political mobilization as the possible solution to low and declining voter turnout. This research explores the effects of face-to-face mobilization efforts that, in the course of 7 months, reached more than 4,500 registered voters in a Florida State House primary race. Controlling for their past voting history, the mobilization effort did increase turnout by about 10% of the electorate. However, the effects were dependent …
The Political Content of Late Night Comedy
During the 2000 national election season, there was unprecedented attention paid by the media, and by presidential campaigns, to the political content of late night comedy shows such as the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the Late Show with David Letterman. Focusing on the more than thirteen thousand jokes about U.S. political figures from 1996 to 2000 on late night comedy talk shows, this study explores the choice of targets and subjects of polit…
The Politics of Injustice
When the Freedom Riders sought an end to segregation in 1961, they had little support from a supposedly liberal administration in Washington. In his efforts to hold a centrist position and with an eye toward re-election, President John F. Kennedy largely ignored and even tried to hamper the efforts of these civil rights activists. While most historians accept JFK s moderation on civil rights as politically prudent, David Niven now argues that Ken…
A Fair Test of Media Bias
Popular sentiment, political actors, and even scholarly work suggest the media are biased. Yet, work on media bias targeted against such varied political entities as Republicans, African Americans, and women does not provide a fair baseline with which to compare coverage. That is, previous research lacks a comparison of coverage focused on politicians who have produced the same record, and who therefore should receive equitable coverage. This stu…
The Mobilization Solution? Face-to-Face Contact and Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election
In the ongoing quest to understand and potentially improve voter turnout, many analysts have focused their attention on political mobilization effects. Some scholars suggest that the failure to engage in widespread personal mobilization efforts has contributed to declining turnout and that a recommitment to mobilization by parties, candidates, and others would reverse the trend. This research explores the effects of face-to-face mobilization effo…
Race, Quarterbacks, and the Media
Talk show host Rush Limbaugh made headlines in 2003 when he appeared on a cable sports program and claimed the media were biased in favor of African American quarterbacks. Using a sample made up of the seven African American starting quarterbacks in the National Football League matched with seven White quarterbacks with comparable statistics, this study considers whether newspaper coverage was slanted by race. The data, including more than 10,000…
Silent Voices
Silent Voices: Public Opinion and Political Participation in America. By Adam J. Berinsky. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 224p. $35.00. Polls, Adam Berinsky warns, are flawed. The source of this flaw is what he labels “exclusion bias,” defined as “the exclusion of the preferences of the sometimes sizable portion of the public who say they ‘don't know’ where they stand on the issues of the day” (p. 2
Throwing Your Hat Out of the Ring
Candidate dropouts are a crucial and understudied population; they represent a significant source for increasing women's candidacies and addressing the gender imbalance in office. Survey evidence demonstrates that women are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is strong, while men are discouraged from running in districts in which their party is weak. Are women more likely to drop out of an election race than are men? If so,…
A Field Experiment on the Effects of Negative Campaign Mail on Voter Turnout in a Municipal Election
This field experiment is used to expose a random sample of voters in a 2003 mayoral race to various pieces of negative direct mail advertising. Exposure to the negative advertising stimulus improved turnout overall about 6 percent over that of the control group. Results show that different topics and amounts of negative advertising had different effects on turnout. The results suggest that alarm bells sounded by some previous research and by publ…
Bush's War
This is not a book overly burdened with qualifications and caveats. Based on his review of media coverage of five President George W. Bush speeches in the aftermath of 9/11, and the wars in Iraq an
An Interesting Bias
Most rigorous studies conclude that there is no consistent partisan or ideological bias in the mainstream American news media. This suggests a natural but little-asked question: Why isn't there more bias in the media? A year spent working as a journalist suggests a possible answer: Advancing a political perspective does not help secure a place on the front page. Instead, the core incentive for a journalist is to be interesting. Interesting work t…
Political science (42 works) · Law (34 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Politics (29 works) · Law (22 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Economics (15 works) · Media studies (11 works) · Demographic economics (10 works)