Princeton University

Specialization: Public opinion; mass media; race and politics; survey methods

Martin Gilens' current research projects examine (1) the responsiveness of federal government policy to the preferences of different segments of the American public; (2) historical changes in media coverage of presidential elections and the impact of those change on the public's knowledge and interest in presidential candidates and campaigns; and (3) the role of (mis)information and heuristic shortcuts in the formation of the American public's policy preferences.

Professor Gilens is the author of Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (University of Chicago Press), and has published on media, race, gender, and welfare politics in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the Berkeley Journal of Sociology. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California Berkeley, and taught at Yale University and UCLA before joining the faculty at Princeton. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.

Ph.D., University of Calfornia, Berkeley

Link to: Personal Web site