Scott Althaus is Merriam Professor of Political Science, Professor of Communication, and Director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also has faculty appointments with the School of Information Sciences and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His work with the Cline Center applies text analytics methods and machine learning algorithms to extract insights from millions of news stories in ways that produce new forms of knowledge that advance societal well-being around the world. His own research interests explore the communication processes that support political accountability in democratic societies and that empower political discontent in non-democratic societies. His research examines how professional journalists construct news about public affairs in an increasingly hybridized communication ecosystem, how leaders shape professionally-produced news coverage for political advantage, how citizens use professionally-produced news coverage to make sense of public affairs, and how citizens convey their preferences to leaders through collective behaviors such as voting and acts of civil unrest. He has particular interests in popular support for war, data science methods for extreme-scale analysis of news coverage, cross-national comparative research on political communication, the psychology of information processing, and communication concepts in democratic theory. He is co-author (with Daron Shaw and Costas Panagopolous) of Battleground: Electoral College Strategies, Execution, and Impact in the Modern Era (Oxford University Press, August 2024) which draws on internal campaign records and novel data sources covering every presidential election from 1952 through 2020 to identify the Electoral College strategies for every major presidential campaign in the modern era, assess how well they executed their plans, and illuminate what difference their state-by-state allocation of candidate visits and television spending made on election day. Other current projects include using data mining methods to help journalists cover terrorist attacks in responsible ways, a book manuscript to be published by Cambridge University Press about the dynamics of popular support for war in the United States, and documenting police uses of lethal force in the United States with the Cline Center's SPOTLITE project.

popular support for war
data science methods for extreme-scale analysis of news coverage
political communication
political psychology
public opinion
the impact of strategic communication activities on news coverage and public opinion
the psychology of information processing
communication concepts in democratic theory
cross-national comparative research
civil unrest and other behavioral manifestations of public opinion

2023 International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award for Building Theory in Political Communication. The Hazel Gaudet-Erskine award is given for “internationally oriented books published in the past ten years that advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of the linkages between the news media and politics in a globalized world in a significant way.”

2023 Campus Excellence in Public Engagement Faculty & Staff Team Award (awarded collectively to the Staff Team of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research). University of Illinois, Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs & Provost. Awarded for the Cline Center’s sustained record of high-impact public engagement research.

2006 Political Communication Article of the Year Award, Political Communication Division of the International Communication Association. Awarded for “Priming Effects in Complex Information Environments” (with Young Mie Kim). 

2004 David Easton Prize for Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics, awarded by the Foundations of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association. The David Easton Prize is given for a book published in the previous five years that “broadens the horizons of contemporary political science by engaging issues of philosophical significance in political life through any of a variety of approaches in the social sciences and humanities.”

2004 Goldsmith Book Prize for Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics, awarded by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. The Goldsmith Prize is given to “the best academic and best trade books that seek to improve the quality of government or politics through an examination of press and politics in the formation of public policy.”

Helen Corley Petit Scholar of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2003-4. Awarded by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UIUC for outstanding achievements in teaching and scholarship.

Professor Althaus joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1996 with a joint appointment in the departments of Political Science and Communication. He is currently the Merriam Professor of Political Science, Professor of Communication, and Director of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois.

Professor Althaus serves on the editorial boards of Political Communication and Public Opinion Quarterly and his research appears in leading journals across several disciplines including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Communication Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly,  Political Communication, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Sociological Methodology. His research and commentary have been featured in a wide range of national and international news organizations including television outlets such as Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN; leading newspapers including The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and the St. Louis Post Dispatch; news magazines such as Forbes, The Atlantic, American Prospect, New York Magazine, Newsweek, Time Magazine, US News & World Reports; as well as National Public Radio and online outlets including PolitiFact, Huffington Post, Politico, and Talking Points Memo.

In 2013, he was honored with a Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UIUC, and his undergraduate and graduate courses regularly appear on the university's "List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students."

Cline Center for Advanced Social Research
2001 South First Street
Suite 207
Champaign, IL 61820

(217) 265-7879