Kathleen Searles

@kesearles.bsky.social

usually thinking about news, politics, technology, and other things i don’t want to talk to you about on an airplane.

One year later - my reflections on what's happened to US science since the National Science Foundation grant terminations last year. The problem of misinformation isn't going away, but our ability to study and understand it is under attack. 1/ 🧪 www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...

I researched misinformation, until the government stopped me | Opinion

A researcher's NSF grant termination reveals a broader attack on science funding and misinformation research, despite rising AI-generated falsehoods.

tennessean.com

The Trump administration's attacks on civil service are profoundly personal. Today at @jhppl.bsky.social, I outline the "science of standing up for science;" how we can use social science research to restore health agencies' regulatory authority. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/articl...

“We Want to Put Them in Trauma”: Understanding the Trump Administration's Attack on Government Health Agency Regulatory Authority | Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law | Duke University Press

read.dukeupress.edu

Happy (official) publication day to one of my favorite projects ever! tldr: Congressional votes on early federal infrastructure policy was influenced by partisan, distributive, and racial considerations

The National Road was an early, but failed, attempt by the United States Congress to build an interstate highway. The Road, which extended through the newly formed western states, led to fierce debate over two interconnected issues. First, should Congress authorize additional routes that would expand the Road beyond its original western route? Second, should the Road remain under federal control or should it be given to the states through which it ran? I find that partisanship was the most consistent predictor of a legislator’s position on these questions. In addition to partisanship, legislators from districts with a larger slave population were also more likely to oppose the Road. Distributive politics also informed representative’s behavior ad those whose districts were more proximate to the Road were more of these projects. In sum, an examination of the politics of the National Road helps to shed light on the interconnection of partisanship, slavery, and distributive politics in early America and its implications for early American political development.

New in PolCom, Maki, Mann & I propose + offer evidence for a new category of election coverage we call *voting process coverage* (VPC); importantly, we find this type of coverage is not just prevalent, but drowns out game frame coverage in lead-up to Election Day www.tandfonline.com/eprint/JFBIF...

U.S. Election Day Coverage of Voting Processes

Voting in the U.S. is a costly activity, so the public looks to the news media for information. And yet, we know little about news coverage of voting. We first defined voting process coverage (VPC)...

tandfonline.com