Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ph.D.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson
  • Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication
  • Director, Annenberg Public Policy Center

Kathleen Hall Jamieson employs rhetorical analysis, surveys, and experiments to understand campaign communication, the science of science communication, and ways to blunt misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director of the University’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Program Director of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands.

She has authored or co-authored 18 books, including Democracy Amid Crises: Polarization, Pandemic, Protests, and Persuasion (2023) with the Annenberg IOD Collaborative, Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped (2022) and Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President (Oxford University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 R.R. Hawkins Award from the Association of American Publishers and was published in a revised paperback edition by Oxford University Press in June 2020. Including Cyberwar, six of the books that Jamieson has authored or co-authored have received a total of 12 political science or communication book awards: Packaging the Presidency (Oxford University Press, 1996), Eloquence in an Electronic Age (Oxford University Press, 1988), Spiral of Cynicism (Oxford University Press, 1997), Presidents Creating the Presidency (University of Chicago Press, 2008), and The Obama Victory (Oxford University Press, 2010). She recently co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Jamieson has won university-wide teaching awards at each of the three universities at which she has taught and has delivered the American Political Science Association’s Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture, the National Communication Association’s Arnold Lecture, the NASEM Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education's Henry and Bryna David Lecture, and the keynote lecture at the CDC's Charles C. Shepard Science Awards (2022). For her contributions to the study of political communication, she received the American Political Science Association’s Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Award in 1995. Her paper “Implications of the Demise of ‘Fact’ in Political Discourse” received the American Philosophical Society’s 2016 Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities.

She is the co-founder of FactCheck.org and its subsidiary site, SciCheck, and director of The Sunnylands Constitution Project, which has produced more than 30 award-winning films on the Constitution for high school students.

In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences awarded Jamieson its Public Welfare Medal for her “non-partisan crusade to ensure the integrity of facts in public discourse and development of the science of scientific communication to promote public understanding of complex issues.” In 2021, she was the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Founder Award. In 2022, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research awarded Jamieson the Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research.

In 2023, Jamieson was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Jamieson is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association. She also is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the AAAS, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association. She is a past president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Education

  • B.A., Marquette University
  • M.A., University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison

Selected Publications

The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words. University of Chicago Press, 2008.

unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation. Random House, 2007.

The Interplay of Influence: News, Advertising, Politics, and the Internet. Sixth Edition. Cengage, 2006.

Capturing Campaign Dynamics 2000 & 2004: The National Annenberg Election Survey. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

The Institutions of American Democracy: The Press. Oxford University Press, 2005.

The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World. Oxford University Press, 2004.

Everything You Think You Know About Politics... and Why You're Wrong. Basic Books, 2000.

Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. Oxford University Press, 1997.

Packaging the Presidency: A History of Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising. Third Edition. Oxford University Press, 1996.

Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership. Oxford University Press, 1995.

Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy. Oxford University Press, 1993.

Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking. Oxford University Press, 1990.

Presidential Debates: The Challenge of Creating an Informed Electorate. Oxford University Press, 1990.

Courses