Adam F. Simon received a Political Science Ph.D. in 1997 from UCLA where, among other awards, he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. His first book—The Winning Message: Candidate Behavior, Campaign Discourse and Democracy—broke new ground in investigating candidate behavior in American electoral campaigns. This project brought together normative and empirical methods as well as formal (game) theory to address the issue of campaign quality. WM begins with the establishing dialogue as a standard for evaluating political campaigns. It then shows that candidates’ self-interest in winning leads them to avoid dialogue, which is substantive campaign discourse. Next, it demonstrates the beneficial effects produced the little dialogue that actually occurs. Fourth, it pinpoints the forces responsible for these rare occurrences. The main lesson of this work is that campaign reform under its present guise will not bring about the more substantive campaigns that the public desires.

His current research focuses on how media interacts with political elites to create and disseminate information affecting citizens' attitudes and actions. The foundational idea is that a multiplicity of elites continuously competes to move coverage and opinion to their advantage. Word choice provides an excellent route to investigate this competition because linguistic uptake—the adoption of a particularized vocabulary—has been experimentally linked to persuasive effects. Using this tool, the pattern of influence across sources and over time can be examined. This research also emphasizes the role of polls and pollsters. We know that wording effects are important, but we have yet to study them systematically. Further, conventional wisdom has pollsters and the public following elite discourse, yet if elites compete, how do they respond? A significant database, centering on the full text of political discourse, media and polling questions covering the issues of abortion, health insurance and the federal budget will hopefully answer these and related questions.

His work has also appeared in the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Communication as well as other scholarly journals. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the International Communication Association.

If you wish to make contact, especially if you are interested in participating in these or similar projects please email adam.simon@yale.edu.

Campus address: 124 Prospect Street, Room 300
Phone: 432-5243
Email: adam.simon@yale.edu