Communication Scholar W. Lance Bennett Receives Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Specialist in Political Communication Doing Research at Institute of Media and Communication Studies at Freie Universität until December 2015. The internationally recognized political scientist and communication scholar, W. Lance Bennett from the University of Washington in Seattle (Washington, USA) is the recipient of a Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation. During the summer and fall of 2015, he will be spending more than six months at the Institute and Communication Studies at Freie Universität. He is working with Barbara Pfetsch, the director of the Division of Communication Theory and Media Effects. During his stay, Bennett will be working on the project entitled, "The Marketplace of Ideas in the Digital Age: Mapping Discourses of Sustainability in National and Transnational Networks." The research in this project focuses on the role of online communication and networks in the development and implementation of new ideas on economic, environmental, and sustainability issues with regard to energy policy and their impact on political decision-making processes. W. Lance Bennett has been a professor of political science at the University of Washington in Seattle since 1982, and since 2000 he has also been a professor of communication and the director of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, at the same university. As the founder of indexing theory, he made internationally influential and innovative contributions to communication research in 1990, when he published the essay, "Toward a theory of press-state relations," in which he demonstrated the influence of political elite opinions and political interpretation patterns on political news coverage.