Regina Lawrence

Regina Lawrence is associate professor of political science in the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University, where she is director of the Northwest Communication Research Group. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington, teaches courses on political communication, public opinion, and public law, and specializes in research analyzing media coverage of public policy issues. She is the author of The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality and has published articles analyzing media coverage of environmental issues, welfare reform, and the recent spate of shootings in public schools. Lawrence’s research at the Shorenstein Center will focus on the tendency of news coverage to “individualize” public health problems by highlighting the personal choices that contribute to these problems and often leaving their policy context out of focus. Combining case studies of news coverage of juvenile substance abuse, school violence, childhood obesity, antibiotic resistance, the anthrax scare of 2001, and other health problems, she will analyze how the news reflects and reinforces the predominant American cultural value of individualism and a typically American difficulty in seeing the collective and institutional dimensions of our problems.