Graber, Doris A. (1923—)

Award-winning scholar, teacher, and mentor, Doris Appel Graber's professional career and personal life are shaped by her inquisitive and adventurous nature, her loyalty to family and friends, and her rigorous, pioneering, and trend-setting scholarship. Her love of experiential travel is a reflection of her insatiable curiosity and interest in understanding the world in all its complexity.

With more than 100 chapters and journal articles, Graber's publications span a number of fields in political science. Among her 15 books to date, several stand out as defining the field of political communication. Processing Politics: Learning From Television in the Internet Age (2001) received the Goldsmith Book Prize for Best Academic Political Communication book of 2003. In it she argues that findings from neurobiology research show how the brain is “wired” to assimilate information more effectively through audiovisuals, thus challenging those who assert that print media are more important than television as a source of political information. She finds that when citizens talk about issues they consider important, they draw upon accurate and substantive information. Television can provide that information, though the full potential of the medium has yet to be realized. Her seminal study, Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide (1984), set a new standard for research on information processing. And the link between political opinion and news about crime was established by Graber more than 25 years ago in Crime News and the Public.

Founding editor of the journal Political Communication in 1992, a journal cosponsored by the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the International Communication Association (ICA), Graber also received APSA's Edelman Career Award that year. Her impact on the field also has been recognized by APSA's book award—the Doris A. Graber Outstanding Book Award for the best book published in political communication in the past decade. Among other offices held, she was vice president of APSA and president of the International Society for Political Psychology, Midwest Public Opinion Association, Midwest Political Science Association, and the political communication divisions of the ICA and APSA.

Graber was a feature writer and reporter for newspapers in St. Louis, Missouri, after completing her BA at Washington University. She took a PhD in international relations and political science at Columbia University in New York. She is currently professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has held academic appointments at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University.