Finding a way to transform MU’s School of Journalism into a think tank for the news and advertising industry has been the main research goal for Esther Thorson, who serves as Professor, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, and Director of Research for the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Her first major effort, in collaboration with Margaret Duffy, was to address the news and advertising crisis caused by the “digital revolution,” reacting to the reality that newspaper and television audiences have been plummeting as consumers and advertisers alike are shifting toward the Internet and other new media technologies.

Thorson highlights a few examples of how the model is being used for newspaper, television, and radio organizations. Working with two newspapers in the South, they are designing a series of phone and Internet surveys to test the wants and needs of audience members in terms of four variables. The results will help them adapt to the changing environment. They have also been working with Minnesota Public Radio to apply the media choice model to a radio medium. In this situation they are figuring out how to make the public radio station “a forum for community discussion about significant issues.” Working with WHO-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, Thorson and Duffy are trying to find a way to drive traffic from broadcast television shows to the station’s website.

When Thorson came to MU in 1993, she was asked to build a research unit for graduate students and faculty in the School of Journalism. After revising the entire doctoral program, hiring new faculty members, and writing research proposals, Thorson has made it possible for MU’s School of Journalism to spend approximately $1.5 million per year on research.

Thorson’s early research involved the Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects Lab conducts advanced research on the physiological responses people have to mass media messages.

Having a Ph.D. in psychology has aided Thorson in observing and understanding people and how they respond to messages, and her research program calls upon her to be a “jack-of-all-trades.” She spent a lot of her early years in advertising research, looking at people’s responses to ads and figuring out what kinds of visual images or auditory stimuli grabs and holds their attention.

Internet Advertising: Theory and Research, which Thorson co-edited with David W. Schumann (University of Tennessee) and now in its second edition, was the first book on Internet advertising. Its contributors are some of the most innovative scholars in the area of advertising and the Internet.

The American Association of Advertisers is a group that includes both scholars and practitioners. Though originally advertising was considered a man’s field, Thorson wonders why no other women have yet been voted into the organization’s fellowship.