Esther Thorson is Professor of Journalism in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State. Thorson is presently studying how people approach and avoid advertising, and more recently how they approach and avoid news. Much of her research has involved modelling audience response to newspaper content, both in print and online. In general, she is fascinated by evolutionary psychological perspectives on the processing of mediated communication. She has more than 300 publications, and has written or edited 17 books. Thorson has devoted much of her career to working with graduate students, having advised more than 55 doctoral dissertations and scores of masters theses. She has also served as a Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Missouri School of Journalism, and at Michigan State through 2023. She is only academic to win the top research awards in three of the major communication associations: American Academy of Advertising, Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, and International Communication Association.
Contact
Michigan State University
College of Communication Arts and Sciences
404 Wilson Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
email: ethorson@msu.com
twitter: @ThorsonE
Google Scholar
Researchgate
“The most important thing in science in not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.”