Thomas Patterson

Thomas E. Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press. He is author of the book Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism, published in October 2013. His earlier book, The Vanishing Voter, looks at the causes and consequences of electoral participation, and his book on the media’s political role, Out of Order, received the American Political Science Association’s Graber Award as the best book of the decade in political communication. His first book, The Unseeing Eye, was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on public opinion in the past half century. He is also the author of Mass Media Election: How Americans Choose Their President (1980), and two general American government texts: The American Democracy and We the People. His articles have appeared in Political Communication, Journal of Communication, and other academic journals, as well as in the popular press. His research has been funded by the Ford, Markle, Smith-Richardson, Pew, Knight, Carnegie, and National Science foundations. Patterson received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1971.

Selected Publications

HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series

• Patterson, Thomas E. "News Coverage of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP17-040, May 2017.
• Patterson, Thomas E. "News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-052, December 2016.
• Patterson, Thomas E. "News Coverage of the 2016 National Conventions: Negative News, Lacking Context." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-051, September 2016.
• Patterson, Thomas E. "News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Primaries: Horse Race Reporting Has Consequences." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-050, July 2016.
• Patterson, Thomas E. "Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP16-023, June 2016.