Sarah Oates University of Maryland, USA

Sarah Oates is a scholar in the field of political communication and democratization. A major theme in her work is the way in which the traditional media and the Internet can support or subvert democracy in places as diverse as Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She has published widely on these topics, including a recent book that compares election coverage in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Russia (Terrorism, Elections, and Democracy: Political Campaigns in the United States, Great Britain, and Russia with Lynda Lee Kaid and Mike Berry, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010). She is the author of a forthcoming book in the Oxford University Press Digital Politics series (Revolution Stalled: The Political Limits of the Internet in the Post-Soviet Sphere). As the founder of the Google Forum to bring together academics with Google U.K., she currently serves as an expert for the European Commission’s Digital Futures project. Before embarking on her academic career, Prof. Oates was a journalist who published in outlets ranging from The Orlando Sentinel to The New York Times.