Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Jamieson is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (since 2020), the American Philosophical Society (since 1997), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the International Communication Association. She is a distinguished scholar of the National Communication Association.

In Cyberwar, Jamieson applies years of research on elections to the problem of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. She concludes that it is highly probable, but not certain, that the Russians turned the election away from Hillary Clinton to Trump.

Jamieson is the author or co-author of more than 100 works, many of which focus primarily on campaign criticism and the discourse of the presidency. Some of her most notable books are Presidents Creating the Presidency (University of Chicago Press, 2008), Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Oxford University Press, 2008), and unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (Random House, 2007).

Six of her authored or co-authored books have received book awards: Packaging the Presidency (NCA Golden Anniversary Book Award); Eloquence in an Electronic Age (NCA James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award); Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good, with Joseph Cappella (Doris Graber Book Award of the American Political Science, ICA Fellows Book Award); Presidents Creating the Presidency, with Karlyn Kohrs Campbell (NCA James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award, NCA Diamond Anniversary Book Award); and The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election, with Kate Kenski and Bruce Hardy (American Publishers Association PROSE Award, ICA Outstanding Book Award, Rod Hart Outstanding Book Award, NCA Diamond Anniversary Book Award). Jamieson also received the Henry Allen Moe prize from the American Philosophical Society in 2016 for her paper "Implications of the Demise of ‘Fact’ in Political Discourse." Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President won the 2019 R. R. Hawkins Award from the Association of American Publishers, and was a Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement.

Covering the media campaigns of America's first presidents to Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, Jamieson looks at the importance of political advertising. In her book, she writes that, "If political advertising did not exist, we would have to invent it." She argues that, although campaigns can be somewhat sleazy and vague, political advertising is a necessity in America, because it reminds voters that they really do have a say in their government.

From 1971 to 1986, Jamieson served as a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. She held the G. B. Dealey Regents Professorship while at the University of Texas from 1986 to 1989, served as the Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 2003 and Director of its Annenberg Public Policy Center from 1993 to the present. Her research areas include political communication, rhetorical theory and criticism, studies of various forms of campaign communication, and the discourse of the presidency.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson (born November 24, 1946) is an American professor of communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She co-founded FactCheck.org, and she is an author, most recently of Cyberwar, about how Russia very likely helped Donald J. Trump become the U.S. President in 2016.

Jamieson was born on November 24, 1946, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received her BA in Rhetoric and Public Address from Marquette University in 1967, her MA in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin at Madison the following year, and her PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1972.