john e. ross chair
in science communication
department of life sciences communication
college of agricultural & life sciences
university of wisconsin

affiliate appointments
center for european studies, communication technologies research cluster,
eye research institute
robert f. and jean e. holtz center for science and technology studies


education
b.a., johannes gutenberg-
universität mainz
publizistik (minors in
political science and business)
m.a., university of wisconsin
journalism & mass communication
ph.d., university of wisconsin
mass communications
(minor in political science)
 

 
dietram a. scheufele



short bio

Dietram A. Scheufele is Professor and John E. Ross Chair in Science Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is Co-PI of the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, and affiliated with UW’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center on Templated Synthesis and Assembly at the Nanoscale.

Scheufele currently co-chairs the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists, a joint committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Bar Association, and is a former member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group to the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

He has done consulting work on communication strategy for PBS, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and other corporate and public sector clients.

Before coming to Wisconsin, Scheufele was a tenured faculty member at Cornell University. During the 2010 fall semester, he will be a visiting fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

 

research

Scheufele's research focuses on the intersection of media, politics and science, and has been supported by multi-year grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other funding agencies.

Scheufele has published extensively in the areas of public opinion, political communication, and public attitudes toward new technologies, including nanotechnology, stem cell research, and GMOs. His work is cited widely across disciplines, and and his article on Framing as a theory of media effects, for instance, is identified by ISI Web of Science as the most frequently cited article in Journal of Communication written in the last decade. ISI also lists two publications by Scheufele among the three most cited articles in Political Communication.

 

academic honors

Scheufele's scholarship and teaching has been recognized with the Robert M. Worcester Award and the Naomi C. Turner Prize from the World Association for Public Opinion Research, the Young Scholar Award for outstanding early career research from the International Communication Association, the Hillier Krieghbaum Under-40 Award for outstanding achievement in teaching, research and public service from the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, the Pound Research Award from the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, the Young Faculty Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, and various other research and teaching awards. He is also a past fellow of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

 

academic service

Scheufele is a member of the editorial boards of Communication Methods and Measures, Communication Research, Communication Studies, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Journal of Communication, and Mass Communication & Society. He also serves on the steering committees of Wisconsin's Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies and the University of Wisconsin Survey Center.

Scheufele is past President of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and former journal review editor for the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. He has served on committees and advisory boards for the National Academy of Engineering, the American Political Science Association, the International Communication Association, the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, and numerous other organizations.

 


contact information

Department of
Life Sciences Communication (map)
University of Wisconsin–Madison
309 Hiram Smith Hall
1545 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1215

(v) +1.608.262.1614
(f) +1.608.265.3042
E-mail: scheufele@wisc.edu


 

what's new

july 15, 2010: 2010 krieghbaum under-40 award from the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication for outstanding achievement in teaching, research and public service

july 7, 2010: online first version of new article with Sei-Hill Kim & Miejeong Han in International Journal of Public Opinion Research on priming effects in Korean presidential races

june 28, 2010: New Comm Yearbook chapter with Anthony Dudo on future research agendas for science communication.

june 23, 2010: Top two faculty paper award (with Shirley Ho and Elizabeth Corley), Mass Communication division, International Communication Association.

june 3, 2010: Talk on media influences on risk perceptions at the International Conference on Risk for Regulators, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Ottawa, Canada.

may 27, 2010: Public release of CALS Academic Affairs Visioning Committee report -- along with a background Q&A on eCALS.

may 5, 2010: New column with Pete Ladwig et al. in MaterialsToday on the changing nature of (online) science communication.

(click here for related USA Today, Madison.com, science + religion TODAY, ars technica and eCALS stories.)

april 21, 2010: New article with Michael Dahlstrom in Environmental Communication on the link between TV viewing choices and environmental attitudes.

march 30-31, 2010: Planning team member for NNI Capstone Workshop on Risk Management Methods & Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Nanotechnology, Washington, DC.

march 26, 2010: 2010 Lanning Distinguished Lecture on the societal and policy implications of nanotechnology, College of Engineering and Architecture, Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

march 25, 2010: Panel on how media shape (un)civil public discourse at Washington State's Thomas E. Foley Institute, Pullman, WA.

march 11, 2010: Talk on The ‘Science’ of Communicating Science at UW's Conversations in Science series.

march 11, 2010: Online-first version of new article with Ashley Anderson and Dominique Brossard in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, exploring the emergence of online audiences and the content they encounter.

(UW-Madison press release.)

february 15, 2010: Materials Today podcast on Nano and the public: Research at the intersection of politics, communication, and emerging technologies with James Williams.

february 1, 2010: Online-first version of new article with Amy Becker et. al. in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, exploring predictors of citizen participation in political controversies about science.

(UW press release here)

january 12, 2010: New column in The Scientist with Elizabeth Corley at ASU, showing widening gaps in public understanding of nanotechnology among different groups of the U.S. public.

january 8, 2010: New chapter with Bertram T. Scheufele on the mechanisms behind framing, in Doing news framing analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives.

october, 28, 2009: Talk on emerging challenges at the intersection of science, communication, and society at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.

october 9, 2009: New article with Elizabeth Corley and Qian Hu on leading U.S. nano-scientists' policy stances about nanotechnology in Journal of Nanoparticle Research (10.1007/s11051-009-9671-5).

october 7, 2009: Release of new survey results (with Bret Shaw) tapping partisan divides in attitudes toward biofuels in Wisconsin.

october 2, 2009: Talk on 'human" science at the 2009 "What is Human?" conference, Center for Humanities, UW-Madison.

september 16, 2009: Keynote at the Annual Meeting of the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network, Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA.

(Listen to an mp3 recording of the keynote talk here.)

September 4, 2009: Online-first version of article with Matthew C. Nisbet on state-of-the-art research and practices in science communication in American Journal of Botany (10.3732/ajb.0900041).

august 4, 2009: New column in The Scientist with colleagues from Wisconsin, Arizona State, and Jülich, arguing that the rifts between scientists and lay publics may not be as deep as some recent surveys suggest.

june 12, 2009: Talk at ESF seminar on Quality and Comparability of Measures for Constructs in Comparative Research: Methods and Applications, Bolzano, Italy.

april 28, 2009: New article with Andy Binder, Kajsa Dalrymple, and Dominique Brossard in Communication Research on the impact of campaign talk on attitude extremity (10.1177/0093650209333023v1).

april 12, 2009: New article with Amy Becker in the International Journal of Press/Politics on public attitudes toward gay marriage during presidential campaigns.

march 9, 2009: Congressional briefing, Nanotechnology and the public: new data for decision makers, U.S. Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus, Washington, DC.

february 19, 2009: Talk at the 2nd Annual Conference on Nanotechnology Law, Regulation and Policy, Food and Drug Law Institute, Washington, DC.

january 25, 2009:
Chapter on framing theory with David Tewksbury in the new third edition of Media Effects.

january 22, 2009:
New article with Bruce Hardy in Communication Theory on the moderating role of political discussion during election campaigns.

 

recent publications
and columns

Ladwig, P., Anderson, A. A., Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., & Shaw, B. (2010). Narrowing the nano discourse? Materials Today, 13(5), 52-54. (doi: 10.1016/s1369-7021(10)70084-5)

Dahlstrom, M. F., & Scheufele, D. A. (2010). Diversity of television exposure and its association with the cultivation of concern for environmental risks. Environmental Communication, 4(1), 54-65.
(doi: 10.1080/17524030903509709)

Anderson, A. A., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2010). The changing information environment for nanotechnology: Online audiences and content. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 12(4), 1083-1094. (doi: 10.1007/s11051-010-9860-2)

Corley, E. A., & Scheufele, D. A. (2010). Outreach gone wrong? When we talk nano to the public, we are leaving behind key audiences. The Scientist, 24(1), p. 22.

Scheufele, B. T., & Scheufele, D. A. (2010). Of spreading activation, applicability, and schemas: Conceptual distinctions and their operational implications for measuring frames and framing effects. In P. D’Angelo & J. A. Kuypers (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives (pp. 110-134). New York: Routledge.

Jeffres , L., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009). What is the field of communication? Seeking answers from a survey of scholars … and – more importantly – from Klaus Schönbach. In C. Holtz-Bacha, G. Reus, & L. B. Becker (Eds.), Wissenschaft mit Wirkung [Research with impact] (pp. 73-84). Wiesbaden (Germany): Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.  

Nisbet, M. C., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009). What's next for science communication? Promising directions and lingering distractions. American Journal of Botany, 96(10), 1767-1778. (doi:10.3732/ajb.0900041)

Corley, E. A., Scheufele, D. A., & Hu, Q. (2009). Of risks and regulations: how leading US nanoscientists form policy stances about nanotechnology. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 11(7), 1573-1585. (doi:10.1007/s11051-009-9671‑5)

Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A., Kim, E., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2009). Religiosity as a perceptual filter: Examining processes of opinion formation about nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science, 18(5), 546–558. (doi:10.1177/0963662507087304)

Scheufele, D. A., Brossard, D., Dunwoody, S., Corley, E. A., Guston, D. H., & Peters, H. P. (2009, August 4). Are scientists really out of touch? The Scientist.

Binder, A. R., Dalrymple, K. E., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009). The soul of a polarized democracy: Talk, media, and attitude extremity during the 2004 presidential election. Communication Research, 36(3), 315-340. (doi:10.1177/0093650209333023v1)

Becker, A. B. and D. A. Scheufele (2009). Moral politicking: Public attitudes toward gay marriage in an election context. International Journal of Press/Politics 14(2), 186-211. (doi:10.1177/1940161208330905)

Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Shih, T., Dalrymple, K. E., & Ho, S. S. (2009). Religious beliefs and public attitudes to nanotechnology in Europe and the US. Nature Nanotechnology, 4(2), 91 - 94. (doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.361)

Tewksbury, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009). News framing theory and research. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research(3rd ed., pp. 17-33). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Hardy, B., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009). Presidential campaign dynamics and the ebb and flow of talk as a moderator: Media exposure, knowledge of candidate issue stances, and political discussion. Communication Theory, 19(1), 89–101. (doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2008.01334.x)

 

 

select talks, lectures
and interviews

Materials Today podcast with James Williams - February 15, 2010.

UW Policy Forum on Communicating Controversial Science – Talk on The Politics of Communicating Science– Madison, WI – July 2009

(Watch the webcast here)

Wednesday Nite @ the Lab (WAA) - Talk on Public opinion and media dynamics surrounding nanotechnology – Madison, WI – March 2009.

(Watch a recording of the webcast here)

 
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