Jennifer Hoewe, Ph.D.
jhoewe@purdue.edu
Associate Professor
Purdue University
About Me:
Dr. Jennifer Hoewe is an associate professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Political Science. She studies political communication and media psychology. She is the former head of the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of AEJMC. Additionally, she is the founder and director of the Media and Politics (MaP) Research Group at Purdue.
Research Interests
Political Communication
Political Psychology
Media Effects
News Media
Entertainment Media
Stereotypes And Prejudice
Political Journalism
Countries of Interest
United States
My Research:
Jennifer Hoewe (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is an associate professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. She studies media psychology and political communication, focusing on how media portrayals impact political attitudes as well as the influence of political identities on media consumption. Her research examines how identity is depicted in media content and how those depictions influence individuals’ identity formation processes, with a focus on stereotypes and intergroup relations.
Jennifer has published more than 40 referred journal articles and book chapters. Her work has been published in Media Psychology, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Environmental Communication, the Journal of Social Issues, and New Media & Society, among others. Her recent study in Science Communication about politically-motivated responses to environmental solutions received the 2017 AEJMC Science, Health, Environment and Risk Communication Article of the Year Award. Also, her work on media portrayals of Muslims was a finalist for the JMCQ Outstanding Research Article of the Year Award in 2017. She also received the 2020 Promising Professor Award from the Mass Communication and Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Jennifer received her Ph.D. from Penn State in 2015, where she was a University Graduate Fellow and received the Excellence in Communication Doctoral Award as well as the Davis Award for ethics and social responsibility. She received her master's degree in journalism from Michigan State, where she was named the Outstanding Graduate Student, and her bachelor's degree from Grand Valley State University.
Prior to her academic career, Jennifer was a journalist and a press assistant for a member of Congress.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
This paper revisits the issue of partisan selectivity in the era of prevalent false, misleading, and biased information. We surveyed a representative sample of adults living in the United States to investigate the relationships among hyperpartisan news use, partisanship, and cognitive and affective involvement. First, we find that strong partisanship—from both Democrats and Republicans—relates to exposure to both left- and right-leaning hyperpartisan news. Second, exposure to left-leaning hyperpartisan content relates to negative affective involvement, while exposure to right-leaning hyperpartisan news relates to positive affective involvement. Neither left- nor right-leaning hyperpartisan news use relates to cognitive involvement, though traditional news use does. These findings add to the literature on partisan selective exposure and provide new details about the makeup of news audiences and their cognitive and affective involvement with hyperpartisan news.
This manuscript puts forth a theory of media priming, where media priming occurs when information from media content is utilized outside the media consumer’s awareness. The media consumer is influenced by a specific aspect of that media content (i.e. a prime), but they are unable to mentally trace the source of said influence. Media priming operates entirely within System 1 processing (fast, automatic, and with little effort) and should only include effects of a prime that are beyond the conscious awareness of the media consumer. Potentially operating through System 2 processing (slow, controlled, and with greater effort), ‘political priming’ may constitute a different phenomenon that examines the impact of information processed and applied within the media consumer’s awareness.
Guided by the reinforcing spirals model, this study examines whether exposure to cable news is associated with policy preferences, particularly those aimed at immigrants and refugees. Analyses of two sets of survey data (N = 200, N = 4,271) show that, after controlling for demographics, other news use, and political ideology, consuming Fox News has a unique relationship with Americans’ policy preferences. Respondents who reported consuming Fox News (online or on TV) preferred stricter policies aimed at immigrants and refugees; however, use of MSNBC and CNN was not related to these policy preferences. A content analysis revealed that FoxNews.com published far fewer stories (N = 123) about immigrants and refugees in the time periods immediately preceding the surveys than did CNN.com (N = 211). However, these FoxNews.com stories provided a different contextualization by emphasizing authority and subversion and deemphasizing care. These findings suggest that Fox News is creating/reinforcing its consumers’ migration-related policy preferences, whereas no such relationship exists for MSNBC and CNN consumers.
The proliferation of media content and the use of that content among various publics frequently raises the question of whether and how media might influence political attitudes and behaviors. Scholarship in political science and communication has continually tried to disentangle these relationships. Recent research has included a variety of theoretical perspectives with a focus on experimental designs, but also including surveys, content analyses, and network analyses. Moderating and mediating variables often determine the strength of the relationships between media and political attitudes, and causality is a crucial consideration when determining the directionality of these relationships. Future research should continue these lines of exploration and also consider new media affordances and user interactions.
This study tests the relationship between viewing political TV shows with female lead characters and political engagement. It argues that parasocial processes provide the necessary link and gender identity is a critical moderating variable. Results of an in-lab experiment show that viewing a female lead character in a politically-driven plotline increases political self-efficacy, interest, and participation among individuals who identify as more feminine, and this effect is mediated by parasocial interactions with that character. Coupled with prior research, these results demonstrate that more feminine individuals may become more politically engaged through parasocial interactions and relationships with fictional female political leaders.
Considering that cable news has become a primary source of political information for many Americans, this article examines the role and impact of Fox News in the United States, particularly as it compares to other news outlets. We begin by offering a historical analysis of Fox News’ formation and growth in popularity, including a review of existing scholarship on the network’s impact on news consumers. Prior research as well as an additional nationally-representative dataset reveals that two policy areas are particularly potent among Fox News’ consumers: immigration and climate change. Additionally, scholars have found initial evidence for the role of Fox News in shaping its viewers’ responses to theCOVID-19 pandemic. We then consider the cognitive processing utilized by news consumers, explaining how it may differ among individuals who opt to consume Fox News and those who get news from other sources. We conclude by reviewing why three specific areas—immigration, climate change, and COVID-19—resonate so strongly with Fox News consumers.
This study sought to understand the relationships between four specific emotions (anger, anxiety, enthusiasm, and hopefulness) and post-election information seeking and sharing behaviors. Young adults assessed their emotional experiences immediately following the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as how they sought and shared information about the election results. Those who experienced anger reported the greatest amount of information seeking and sharing. Anger also uniquely predicted seeking and sharing through interpersonal communication. Anxiety and enthusiasm were related to some seeking and sharing behaviors, but a far smaller number. Hopefulness had little relationship with information gathering.
This study examined political television dramas with lead female characters, proposing a model that links viewing of these shows with political engagement. A survey revealed that regular viewers of Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, or Scandal reported feeling transported by these programs’ narratives and parasocial relationships with the main characters (i.e., women in positions of political leadership). These responses were also related to increases in political interest and self-efficacy, with interest predicting real-world political participation. The findings illustrate that these political dramas have prosocial implications, including the non-stereotypical representation of women as well as increased political engagement among viewers.
This research explores the effects of visual representations of immigrants and refugees in U.S. news outlets. Study 1 examined news photographs about immigrants and refugees that were shared on Twitter by regional news outlets in all 50 states. Most photos contained either a human interest frame, featuring immigrants and refugees as everyday people, or a political frame, showcasing politicians. Study 2’s experiment determined the effects of these visuals on participants’ emotions and, in turn, their attitudes toward immigrants and refugees. The political frame increased negative emotions, leading to negative attitudes. The human interest frame increased positive emotions, enhancing positive attitudes.
This study examines the use of the term ‘radical Islam’ as a framing device from two perspectives. First, a content analysis of The New York Times and Washington Post suggested that ‘radical Islam’ is a recent addition to the public lexicon and is rapidly rising in use. The term is more recently associated with negatively charged language and linked to terrorism. Second, an experiment showed that reading about a perpetrator associated with ‘radical Islam’ (as opposed to ‘terrorism’) led to an increase in Islamophobia among all participants – indicated through fear of Muslims and Islam. An interaction effect emerged such that self-identified conservatives did not differentiate between ‘radical Islam’ and ‘terrorism’ when determining culpability, but self-identified liberals did. These results indicate that the US news media has increasingly linked ‘radical Islam’ with terrorism and other negative ideas, while some sectors of the American public struggle to disentangle the two concepts.
Given the intense debate surrounding the United States’ policies regarding admission of refugees and immigrants into the country, this study set out to determine how the news media cover refugees and how that coverage influences news consumers. This study examines how news stories informed the public about the individuals affected by the wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In particular, it explores usage of the word “refugee” as opposed to “immigrant” to determine how individuals fleeing their home countries were framed by the press. A content analysis revealed that U.S. newspapers were more likely than international newspapers to conflate the term “immigrant” with “refugee.” Also, when refugees were incorrectly described as “immigrants,” references to terrorism were more likely. The experimental portion of this study uncovered how news consumers respond to this framing of “refugee” versus “immigrant” in the same war-torn situation. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who read about refugees did not distinguish them from immigrants in the same situation, indicating they may have adopted the U.S. news media’s conflation of these terms. Republicans, however, had more negative perceptions of both refugees and immigrants than did Democrats or Independents, reporting a greater perception of threat and favoring more stringent policy. These results suggests that American news consumers do not distinguish between refugees and immigrants, which at least partially implicates U.S. news media for not providing a solid benchmark for Americans’ understanding of these groups of people.
This study examined the first- and third-person effects of emotional and informational messages, particularly relating to the critical issue areas of energy, the environment, and global warming. Due to intense political polarization on such issues, it also explored the role of political party identification. The results of an experiment indicated that informational messages about the environment produced third-person effects, while environmental advertisements meant to evoke emotion caused first-person effects. Moreover, emotional environmental advertisements appealed more to Republicans and those who did not support a political party. As such, indirect, emotional messages appear to represent an opportunity for strategic environmental communicators to design campaigns that resonate with potentially unreceptive audiences.
Using an experimental design that measures participants’ actual behavior, this study tests the inclusion of a perceived outgroup in an advertisement for a well-established brand to determine if political orientations interact with an advertisement’s content to predict consumption of that product. The results indicate that an advertisement’s activation of one’s political orientation can either change or reinforce brand loyalty. Specifically, more conservative individuals responded to the presence of Muslim and Arab individuals in a Coca-Cola advertisement by selecting Pepsi products despite their initial preference for Coca-Cola; whereas, more liberal individuals maintained their initial brand loyalty to Coca-Cola.
This study examined political journalists’ definitions of public opinion and how these definitions influence the structure of political news stories. After considering prior conceptualizations of public opinion, a scale of two distinct definitions of public opinion was created, consisting of the optimist’s and the pessimist’s definitions. Using a survey of political journalists in the United States, these public opinion definitions were significant predictors of the use of particular sources in political news stories. Importantly, the two definitions had opposite influences on the use of opinion polls, shedding light on the discrepancy in use and perception of poll results in political news.
This study analyzes letters to the editor in two Oklahoma newspapers during the debate over a constitutional amendment banning judicial use of the Islamic moral code called “Shariah Law.” Using Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to operationalize the moral evaluations in media framing, three morality-based frames were identified: a Patriot frame emphasizing Shariah’s harms, a Heritage frame advocating loyalty to the American Way, and a Golden Rule frame promoting equal treatment of Muslims. Each frame was related to moral foundations that align with particular political ideologies, and amendment supporters were more likely to frame their arguments in moral terms.
Research in motivated reasoning supports the notion that sociopolitical identity moderates the impact of knowledge on attitudes toward science issues. However, science knowledge and sociopolitical orientation have been measured in different ways, and the results have not been entirely consistent. In this study, 964 adults participated in an online survey-experiment examining their reactions to a message about local water quality. Results show that while issue-specific knowledge predicts increased environmental science public policy support, “polluting” the information environment with already politicized message frames activates sociopolitical orientation as a moderator and, among certain groups, reverses the direction of the relationship.
Media Appearances:
TV Appearances:
Discussed voter turnout before the 2016 U.S. presidential election
Radio Appearances:
Discussed recent research on women in political television (interview begins at minute 19:21)
Newspaper Quotes:
Discussed Trump's legacy in American politics
Discussed the impact of COVID-19 on the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
Discussed the impact of newspaper endorsements for political candidates
Discussed the role of Fox News in American politics
Discussed research on women in political television
Discussed research on women in political television
Discussed research on women in political television
Discussed research on women in political television
Discussed the results of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections
Discussed political journalism during the Trump administration
Other:
Op-ed: Are you willing to pay for news? The future of journalism may depend on it