About

Jennifer Hoewe is an Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University, with courtesy appointments in Political Science. She serves as the Associate Director of the Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT), and is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Purdue Research in Media Effects (PRIME) Lab. Her research program intersects political communication and media psychology, focusing on how and why people consume media content, how they cognitively process it, and the effects of media content, particularly in political contexts. Dr. Hoewe has an extensive publication record, including over 50 refereed journal articles and book chapters, with her work appearing in prominent outlets such as Human Communication Research, Communication Monographs, Media Psychology, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. She is the author of the upcoming book "Enjoyment is Breaking News," scheduled for publication by The MIT Press in September 2026, which explores the evolution of the news environment and its impact on news consumers, offering recommendations for journalists and the public. Her professional service includes serving on the Advisory Committee for the Center for C-SPAN Scholarship & Engagement (CCSE) and formerly heading the Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Dr. Hoewe has received numerous awards recognizing her scholarly and teaching excellence, including being named a University Faculty Scholar in 2026, the Redding Faculty Fellow, the W. Charles Redding Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Excellence in Discovery and Creative Endeavors Award from Purdue's College of Liberal Arts. Her earlier recognitions include the Early Career Award from Penn State's Graduate School, the Promising Professor Award from AEJMC, and the Science Communication Article of the Year Award. Her background includes a Ph.D. from Penn State University, a master's degree in journalism from Michigan State University, and an undergraduate degree from Grand Valley State University, with prior experience as a journalist and press assistant for a member of Congress.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Business
• Art
• Public relations
• Developmental psychology
• Literature
• Marketing
• Advertising
• Epistemology
• Law
• Multimedia
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Predictors of partisan news selection and political misinformation sharing

  Communication Monographs · 2025-10-13 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Partisanship and its effects on metacognitive effort, agreement, and misinformation detection

  Communication Research Reports · 2025-03-05

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Political pets: The pawsitive effect of dogs in politicians’ social media posts

  Journal of Information Technology & Politics · 2025-03-02 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mechanisms of Partisan News Use: The Roles of Metacognitive Effort and Enjoyment

  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media · 2025-12-19

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• News bias perceptions as impacted by source cues, content cues, and media bias ratings

  Communication Monographs · 2024-02-13 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Using three experimental studies, this research considers whether exposure to source cues, content cues, and media bias ratings impacts perceptions of ideological bias in news stories. As a possible news media literacy intervention strategy, viewing a media bias ratings chart after reading a news story had limited influence on assessments of bias. Source cues consistently influenced bias perceptions. Study 1 and Study 2 revealed evidence of the relative hostile media perception, where Republicans and Democrats perceived the news stories as biased in the same direction but to a significantly different degree. This finding did not replicate in Study 3, where content cues were held constant. Thus, content cues, alongside source cues, appear necessary in facilitating the relative hostile media perception.

  PublisherDOI

• CONGRESSIONAL DISCUSSIONS OF ABORTION

  Purdue University Press eBooks · 2024-11-23

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A mindfulness-based information literacy framework for the current information environment

  Journal of Information Literacy · 2024-11-29

  articleOpen access

  This paper proposes a new information literacy (IL) framework, based around mindfulness, that is suited for the contemporary informational environment. This framework results from a weeklong interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars, theorising and incorporating mindfulness as a significant aspect of healthy information seeking and interpretation. Our framework builds on existing IL frameworks but encourages information consumers to recognise their emotional responses and political biases while providing reminders that information always contains political components. By doing so, this framework updates existing IL guidelines to better reflect the current era of rising polarisation and affective media consumption. We present a mindfulness framework for IL that combines mindfulness practices with critical thinking in addressing the emotional impact of mis/disinformation and conspiracy theories on the current information society.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How nature- and humanity-based awe experiences in video games can differentially lead to hedonic and eudaimonic outcomes

  Communication Monographs · 2024-09-05 · 4 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Shows like ‘Scandal’ and ‘Madam Secretary’ inspire women to become involved in politics in real life

  2023-11-21

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Media Use Model: A metatheoretical framework for media processes and effects

  Human Communication Research · 2023-10-27 · 10 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The Media Use Model (MUM) presents a metatheoretical framework that aims to unify several existing theories of media processes and effects. It uses a constraint satisfaction approach to coherence to explain the dynamic relationship between a media consumer’s motivations, expectations, individual differences, and, primarily, their cognitive processing during media use. The MUM includes six propositions, which represent stages during which a media consumer’s existing processing constraints are taken into consideration during their selection, interpretation, and comprehension of media content. It allows for both spontaneous and deliberate processing that can result in coherence or incommensurability, which then predicts continued media use or a change in media selection, respectively. Within this metatheoretical framework, (in)coherence is presented as a continuum where media consumers may have different interpretations of the same media content, which can then be used to understand their responses to it.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brian J. Bowe

  Western Washington University

  10 shared

• Geri Alumit Zeldes

  Michigan State University

  9 shared

• Brett Sherrick

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  7 shared

• Cynthia Peacock

  4 shared

• Lee Ahern

  Pennsylvania State University

  3 shared

• David R. Ewoldsen

  Michigan State University

  3 shared

• Eric C. Wiemer

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  3 shared

• Manuel Chávez

  Michigan State University

  3 shared

Education

• Ph.D., College of Communications

  Penn State

  2015

• M.A., School of Journalism

  Michigan State University

  2010

• B.A., Communication

  Grand Valley State University

  2007

Awards & honors

• University Faculty Scholar (2026)
• Redding Faculty Fellow (2026)
• Early Career Award from the J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Gra…
• Top 20 Article of 2024 by the Library Instruction Round Tabl…
• Outstanding Instructor Award from The Arts Federation (2024)