Erik C. Nisbet

Erik C. Nisbet is the Owen L. Coon Endowed Professor of Policy Analysis & Communication and director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. His research lies at the intersection of communication, public opinion, and public policy in the areas of science, technology, and environmental policy, governance and elections, and international security. An expert on cross-national survey methodology and field experiments, Erik has led research projects in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Iran, France, Great Britain, Germany, Poland, and several Arab countries. His research has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of State.

Erik’s scholarship centers on three broad theoretical questions: 1) how strongly held partisan, national, religious, or ethnic identities bias the processing of media or persuasive messages and the consequences for policy attitudes and behavior, 2) causes and consequences of online information-seeking and expression in authoritarian and non-democratic contexts, and 3) how macro contextual factors interact with individual differences or behaviors to explain heterogeneity in communication processes and outcomes.