Experts Matter. Find Yours.
Connect for media, speaking, professional opportunities & more.
Hofstra Experts Weigh In on the 2024 Presidential Election
Hofstra University boasts a team of distinguished media-ready experts, ready to talk about the newest developments in the 2024 presidential race. They include presidential scholar Meena Bose, constitutional law professor James Sample, media expert and former NBC executive Mark Lukasiewicz, and Lawrence Levy, an expert in suburban studies and suburban voting trends More details on their expertise and recent media appearances are provided below, along with information on how to connect with them for interviews and commentary. Dr Meena Bose Executive Director of the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency & Professor of Political Science Dr. Meena Bose brings her extensive experience and frequent media presence to discussions on the historic nature of the 2024 presidential race. Recent topics she has been interviewed about include next steps for the Democrats now that President Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 presidential race, former President Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate, how the assassination attempt on Trump may have impacted the race, and the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity rulings View Profile & Connect Recent Media Dr. Meena Bose has recently been called on by media to discuss: CNN's Biden-Trump debate; how President Biden may recover from his poor debate performance; and the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. She has appeared on WABC-TV, WNYW Fox 5, Fox radio stations across the country, and Reuters TV. She is frequently interviewed by Newsday and Newsweek, and her expertise has also been prominently featured in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She is the author of the forthcoming book: Pragmatic Vision: Obama and the Enactment of the Affordable Care Act. James Sample Professor, Maurice A. Deane School of Law James Sample, a constitutional law professor, is a sought-after legal and political commentator on legal challenges facing former President Donald Trump, Supreme Court ethics, the broader implications of presidential immunity, and the guilty verdict delivered in the Senator Robert Menendez trial. He most recently was interviewed about President Biden leaving the race and throwing his support behind VP Kamala Harris. View Profile & Connect Recent Media James Sample is a regular commentator for Reuters, CNN, CBS, WNYW Fox 5, and WCBS on topics like the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity; ethics questions facing Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas; former President Donald Trump’s legal challenges, including the election interference case and the “Hush Money” trial. In addition to his broadcast media interviews, Professor Sample has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, U.S. News & World Report, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, Salon, USA Today, and The National Law Journal, as well as in leading blogs and regional outlets throughout the country. Mark Lukasiewicz Dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication Mark Lukasiewicz offers his expertise on media coverage of the presidential race, drawing on his vast experience in planning and supervising election coverage. Before joining Hofstra, Dean Lukasiewicz was senior vice president of specials at NBC News, planning and supervising coverage of major breaking news events, including presidential elections and debates from 2004 to 2016. View Profile & Connect Recent Media A former NBC executive, Dean Lukasiewicz is available to speak about media coverage of the 2024 presidential race. Recent examples include the June 27th debate and expectations for President Biden’s interview on July 5 with George Stephanopoulos. Before joining Hofstra, Dean Lukasiewicz was senior vice president of specials at NBC News, planning and supervising coverage of major breaking news events, including presidential elections and debates from 2004 to 2016. He has been interviewed in recent weeks by the Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Tribune News Service, Scripps Morning News, and the AP. Lawrence Levy Associate Vice President and Executive Dean of the National Center for Surburban Studies (NCSS) In his leadership role at NCSS, Dean Levy has worked with Hofstra's academic and local communities to shape an innovative, interdisciplinary agenda for interdisciplinary suburban study. He has commented on a variety of political issues – most recently President Biden dropping his reelection bid and what that means for down-ballot elections. View Profile & Connect Recent Media Prior to joining Hofstra, Dean Levy spent 35 years as a reporter, editorial writer, columnist and PBS host, winning many of journalism's top awards (including Pulitzer finalist) for in-depth works on suburban politics, education, taxation, housing and other key issues. As a journalist, he was known for blending national trends and local perspectives and has covered seven presidential campaigns and 15 national conventions. Visit our Expert Center for a full directory of Hofstra experts insights.
Dr Carl Senior identified two types of smile – affiliative and reward – given by political leaders during the last UK general election in 2019 The eventual winner, Boris Johnson, was found to display the affiliative smile, which acts to align voter behaviour The study is the first to look at how supporters of election losers react to the eventual winner. New research led by Aston University’s Dr Carl Senior has found that the type of smile used by a political leader can influence voters to support them and their political agenda. There are many different types of smile, and the researchers, which also included Professor Patrick Stewart from the University of Arkansas, US, Professor Erik Bucy from Texas Tech University, US, and Professor Nick Lee from Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick, UK, focused on two in particular – the ‘reward’ smile and the ‘affiliative’ smile. They used videos from political leaders from the 2019 UK general election, which was won by the Conservative party, then led by Boris Johnson. The Labour party, then led by Jeremy Corbyn, came second. Jo Swinson was the leader of the third-placed Liberal Democrat party. The ‘reward’ smile is the genuine, or felt smile, associated with joy and enthusiasm. It is the smile most likely to be contagious with onlookers, and has been linked to higher levels of trust. The ‘affiliative’ smile, meanwhile, communicates approachability, acknowledgement, and appeasement. It is associated with an affinity towards the onlooker and is thought to be important for developing cooperative relationships. The researchers selected volunteers professing to be supporters of each of the three main parties and showed them the same video footage of the three leaders – Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson – before and after the 2019 election. The team assessed the emotional response to the different smiles for the candidates, whether positive (happiness and affinity) or negative (anger and distress). When shown footage of election winner Johnson’s affiliative smile after the election, people in all groups showed an increase in happiness and affinity compared to when they were shown the footage before the election. Supporters of the losing parties showed an overall decrease in the negative effect. It was only this affiliative smile which was found to act as a mechanism to align voter feelings and behaviour to the dominant, or winning, political message. The reward smile did not have the same effect. Supporters of Labour showed an increased level of anger and distress when viewing Johnson’s reward smile after the election compared to before it. The effects for Corbyn and Swinson were less marked, showing that they failed to significantly change voters’ responses to them. Their appeal was somewhat fixed and failed to match Johnson’s charm. Johnson tapped into the voters’ feeling of annoyance about the slow Brexit process with his ‘Get Brexit done’ slogan, while Corbyn’s position was ambiguous. Swinson’s party was pro-Europe but lacked Johnson’s performative abilities to link a strong message to his nonverbal communication. Previous work by various researchers has shown that observers judge leadership traits and behaviour, or a lack thereof, from non-verbal cues such as facial expressions. However, there has, until now, been little research outside the US on the effect of facial displays on voter behaviour. Dr Senior said: “The human smile can convey both rewarding and affiliative social intent and thus has significant utility in politics, where the ability to bond with and reassure voters is vital to electoral success. We are in an unprecedented year as there are numerous elections scheduled to take place across several continents. The outcome of these campaigns will have a significant impact on millions of people across vast geopolitical regions. Given that almost all politicians involved in these election campaigns will make full use of broadcast media to reach voters, it is crucial to understand the effectiveness of their non-verbal displays in shifting voting preference.” Professor Lee said: “The individual appeal of party leaders has become increasingly influential. A smile can’t win an election on its own. But Johnson’s personal appeal transcended party policies, connecting with people who hadn’t planned to vote for him. “The upside for today’s politicians is that charisma is not an innate quality. It can be taught. By paying attention to their facial behaviour and ensuring they display the right smile in the right context, they can still leverage the power of emotional responses. It is something leaders of all organisations can learn.” The researchers say more work is required to understand how smiles work together with other verbal and nonverbal displays to generate affinity in voters and convey social dominance to other leaders. PLOS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301113
Building a Gateway to Real News in Broadcast Journalism
Long gone are the days when local media were held up as the first and final word on current affairs. It’s safe to say, the world has never experienced such a period of widespread participation in the news generating process. At the same time, we’ve never seen a more prolific inundation of content and voices from so many corners, all striving to reflect their two cents in the final story. This has also resulted in some of our most credible voices with relevant stories struggling to be heard. Why is that? The train may have left the station, but there is a more effective track it can follow before it’s too late. Video defines the news agenda One of the most formative trends we are now witnessing is the exponential increase in the amount of video created by local and national news outlets around the world, as well as mainstream contributors – from the general public, to corporations, and interest groups – who are producing video content at a staggering rate. The quality of this content is left to the creator’s standards. In this era of fake news, there has never been a more critical need in broadcast news for credible sources. Experts: Undiscovered or inaccessible? Many respected organizations (from research institutions and higher education to think tanks and private sector organizations) maintain significant stockpiles of critical and timely expertise – like research, analysis, and raw data – with which they are challenged to cut through the noise to get into the hands of those who need it. Broadcast media at all levels, from local to international, continue to play a critical role in getting these stories out. But many legitimate media outlets are facing financial burden and an onslaught of competition for audience against a growing field of alternative news sources. Ironically, current editorial and newsgathering processes even for the most mature media organizations remain cumbersome. Reporters’ search for information and sources in the field increases as their own numbers dwindle by the day. As credible news sources continue to battle unqualified viral content, the question remains: What can we do to make real news easier, faster and cheaper to create and deliver? Building a gateway to credible sources The secret may just lie in making credible information, broadcast-ready expert sources, and relevant stories more immediately accessible to media. Today, ExpertFile and Dejero announced that we are partnering to enhance broadcast newsroom access to credible expert sources by making the ExpertFile directory available through Dejero’s LIVE+ Control management system, which leading broadcasters around the world are now using to capture and distribute high quality live news feeds. We’re at the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show in Las Vegas this week demonstrating this powerful integration with Dejero. Experts on over 25,000 topics will be discoverable directly from the Dejero control panel in newsrooms all over the world. For us, it’s about helping journalists more easily pursue compelling, timely news stories by connecting them to those credible, broadcast-ready experts. We are focused on building a gateway to the people, content and story ideas that can help define and respond to today’s news agenda. By building the world’s leading search engine and content platform for experts, we’re opening a new chapter with partners such as Dejero to build the bridges and channels to distribute this content to those who need it now…and fast! Already the response we’re getting from some of the biggest broadcast networks in the world here at NAB2017 is very encouraging. But there’s much more work to be done to help this industry. We look forward to some great conversations. If you are at NAB, please drop by the Dejero booth and say hi or drop us a line.
Whats YOUR Audience Engagement Score
Despite the billions of dollars now being spent on content, many schools have a big problem – Invisible experts. Faculty remain one of the most valuable assets for building market visibility and brand reputation. Yet surprisingly, most schools struggle to develop a strategic presence for their expert content beyond blogs and simple text based biographies and boring head shots. In this age of multimedia and social content, it’s a fact that visitors will go elsewhere if you haven’t created an engaging presence for your expert content. The costs of invisible experts Missed Media Inquiries: Print and broadcast media go elsewhere if you haven’t made it easy for journalists to find, evaluate and contact your experts. Less Engaged Visitors: Lack of multimedia content means visitors won’t spend as much time on your website and will feel less compelled to respond to your calls to action. Poor Discoverability in Search Engines: Google is a starting point for most audiences, so not appearing in the first few pages means lost opportunity for engagement and brand recognition. Poor Research Recognition: In academia, the lack of details on faculty research means missed licensing revenues, government grants and less opportunities for research collaborations. Faculty Engagement: Faculty want to see an online presence that professionally recognizes their work and builds their reputation. Lost Talent: Faculty prospects want to see how you represent your best people. Publishing professional, engaging expert content helps you recruit and retain the best talent through proper recognition of their contributions. So How Does YOUR Organization Score? Based on our research working with thousands of experts, Fortune 500 clients and leading higher education and healthcare institutions we looked at all the best practices in working with expert content. Then we created a quick diagnostic tool called Audience Engagement Score (AES) that is a simple way to assess how your organization is performing in 5 key areas. AES gives you a score based on a simple 100 point scale. If you are scoring below 70% there is certainly more you could be doing to create an engaging online presence for your experts. Until now, there hasn’t been an industry benchmark by which an institution can effectively measure how well they are promoting their expertise online. Here are the 5 key areas we assess: Discoverability Can audiences quickly search your website for your faculty experts and their content by topics, keywords and names? Are you missing important leads because your faculty content isn’t ranking high enough in Google search results? Credibility Can visitors quickly review detailed biographies and overviews of your experts related to their areas of research? Can past speaking engagements and featured interviews, articles and publications be easily referenced? Engagement Do you have up-to-date content such as videos, photos, publications and social media feeds available for journalists to review prior to booking media interviews? Are you creating news alerts for breaking or popular topics to make them more interesting to prospective clients and journalists? Responsiveness Have you made it easy for audiences to reach you and your faculty experts within seconds at the moment you have their interest? Or are they going to other schools? Mobility Is your content well designed for a growing base of mobile phone and tablet users? Remember the experts that walk the halls in your organization are your greatest asset. Would you like to know how your organization scores? If you have 30 seconds, click here and we’ll put together a customized, report for you including helpful industry benchmarks. Send us the website address you’d like us to review and we’ll do the rest. Get YOUR Free AES Report
Part 1: Collaborating with Faculty Experts: A How-To Guide for Marketing Departments & Deans
“I don’t have time to do this.” “I don’t think I’m the right expert.” “My subject area is too specific.” Have you ever approached a faculty member with an opportunity to speak to the media or perhaps speak at an event, only to hear responses like these? Asking certain faculty members to help serve as experts can be challenging. While it’s becoming more widely accepted by faculty that responding to such requests is a great way to build their personal reputation – as well as the institution’s – there is still work to be done in this area. With my experiences I wanted to share some useful tips to help you better collaborate with your faculty and get more results: 1. Walk the Halls: Stay Connected to Important Faculty Research & Publications Faculty play a key role in helping you tell compelling stories to a variety of audiences such as media, prospective donors and students. Yet it’s amazing how many communications people are disconnected from important discoveries their experts are working on. They get caught up in day-to-day events and struggle to find time to walk the campus. The first step in collaborating with your faculty is showing them you care. Make yourself approachable as a resource to help them communicate their stories and you’ll see dramatic results. While it may be tough, it is worth the time investment. 2. Take Inventory: Assess Which Experts Can Be Most Valuable in Helping You Engage Various Audiences With so many faculty members across the campus involved in a wide range of activities, it’s important to develop a framework that identifies who you should be working with. While faculty have deep subject-matter expertise, not all are suited to helping with certain engagements such as broadcast media interviews. To better assess your faculty look at these key factors: Credibility Does the expert have a deep understanding of their focus area? How respected are they among their peers? Have they conducted research in this area? Have they been published? Have they spoken at conferences or received awards for their work? Relevance Is their field of research relevant to various audiences such as Media, Prospective Students, Donors and Partners? Engagement How are their writing skills? Do they have experience with public speaking to various audiences? Can they conduct an interview with a reporter? Are they willing to participate or get media training? Responsiveness Do they understand the significant value they can contribute in helping you build your institution’s reputation? Are they comfortable with being in the spotlight? Can they be available on short notice (within hours) for media interviews? Are they interested in building their own personal brand? 3. Get Alignment: Get Senior Leadership on the Bus Consulting with Faculty Deans and other leaders on the campus will help you gain important support for your efforts to work more with faculty. Identifying their objectives at a program level will help you ensure that your work isn’t viewed as another “make work” exercise for faculty. Show them how your work with faculty experts will have potential to impact the following: Brand reputation in the community and among peers Media coverage Increased student enrolment Better Alumni engagement Increased donations to the school Government and research funding Corporate partnerships 4. Tap into Peer-to-Peer Power: Focus on Faculty Evangelists We all know who our “go-to” faculty are. The people who will enthusiastically help you try out some new approaches. These are the faculty who are doing great research but also can tell a great story and are respected among their colleagues. Identify a manageable group (a range of 3-6 experts is a good number to start). Assess them using the criteria we discuss in point #2. Then get these select experts to invest a little time with you to work on topic strategies and content development. Explain to them what you are trying to achieve and listen to their feedback. Getting their support, and helping them develop their content and stories is the key to success. As evangelists, they can be vital to getting buy-in across the campus. 5. “Opt-In” your Experts: Look for Different Types of Contribution While media coverage is a big focus for many organizations it often tends to dominate the discussion about experts. Think about the ways your experts can contribute and help you tell your story to a variety of audiences beyond media (see point #3). Faculty can be engaged in a broad spectrum of activities such as: Television Radio Print Research on specific topics Blog posts Podcasts Speaking at conferences Speaking at student recruiting events Attending or speaking at alumni events Attending or speaking at donor events Build a “Contributions List” that outlines activities where you may need support and get faculty to opt-in. Getting this agreement in advance allows you to better assess where you have “bench strength” to plan for specific projects. At the end of the day, you won’t get 100% of the faculty to jump on board, but we have seen that a good plan and collaborative communication raises engagement and participation. READ PART II of Collaborating with Faculty Experts: A How-To Guide for Organizations.
Trump's Twitter Practices Unconstitutional: New Media, First Amendment Expert Weighs In
On Wednesday, a federal judge declared that President Trump's practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account is unconstitutional. The ruling was reached after several plaintiffs accused the president of violating their First Amendment rights by blocking their access to his Twitter feed. The plaintiffs argued they’d been blocked specifically because of their critical viewpoints. Trump’s 9-year-old @realdonaldtrump account has more than 50 million followers. "Yesterday’s ruling is important because it gives people freedom to consume the opinions of public figures on social media platforms. This is the same right individuals have with any other public forum such as newsprint and broadcast media," said Mia Moody- Ramirez, Ph.D., professor of journalism, public relations and new media at Baylor University. Moody-Ramirez is a nationally recognized expert in topics of new media, race, class and culture. She studies the media framing of various issues, including people of color, women and political candidates. Her book "From Blackface to Black Twitter: Critical Reflections on Black Humor, Gender, Race & Politics" will be available this summer. "Justice Department lawyers argued that it was Trump’s choice and blocking individuals should be no different from the president deciding in a room who not to listen/talk to. However, the ruling distinguishes Trump’s Twitter account — which, like public parks, is under government control. In public forums, the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, regardless of a person’s viewpoint," Moody Ramirez explained. "Worth noting," she said, "is this ruling will not affect ordinary Twitter users who can block and follow other Twitter users. President Trump’s account @realdonaldtrump is a space operated by the government for government business, and therefore, cannot limit speech based on an individual’s viewpoints." Moody-Ramirez is the author of several books, including: * "From Blackface to Black Twitter: Critical Reflections on Black Humor, Gender, Race & Politics" (Peter Lang), summer 2018 * "The Obamas and Mass Media: Race, Gender, Religion, and Politics" (Palgrave Macmillan) with Dr. Jannette Dates, 2013 * "Black and Mainstream Press’ Framing of Racial Profiling: A Historical Perspective" (University Press of America), 2009 She is available to speak to reporters. Source:
