Erika Franklin Fowler is an American political scientist. She is an Associate professor of Government at Wesleyan University, having previously served as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Early life and education

Franklin Fowler was born to two public school teachers.^[1] She earned her Bachelor of Arts from St. Olaf College and her Master's degree and PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[2] Her thesis was titled Missing messages? elections on local television news and Barry Burden sat on her committee.^[3] While earning her PhD, one of Franklin Fowler's faculty advisors directed the Wisconsin Advertising Project and, upon his retirement, Franklin Fowler and others took over.^[4] She also co-authored a study titled Medical News for the Public to Use? What's on Local TV News^[5] which used a representative sample of the top 50 news markets to conclude that 76% of all stories involved a medical condition.^[6]

Career

Upon earning her PhD, Franklin Fowler accepted a two year Robert Wood Johnson Scholarship in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.^[7] In 2010, she became an Assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University and co-directed their newly launched Wesleyan Media Project (WMP). The aim of the project was to provide a non-partisan, neutral analysis of all political television advertising during the 2010 United States elections to the public.^[8] They quantified data collected during the election and concluded that the tone of advertisements during the campaign were equal to those in 2008.^[9] Following the same idea, in 2013 she co-published Negative, angry, and ubiquitous: Political advertising in 2012 with Travis N. Ridout. Together, they quantified the data of 3 million campaign ads during the 2012 United States elections and concluded that three-quarters of all ads in the presidential race were negative in tone.^[10]

During the 2015–16 academic year, Franklin Fowler co-authored a book with Michael M. Franz and Travis N. Ridout titled Political Advertising in the United States. The book was a survey of how political advertising influenced voters.^[11] She was subsequently granted tenure by the Wesleyan Board of Trustees.^[12]

Following the 2018–19 academic year, Franklin Fowler received Wesleyan's Binswanger Prizes for Excellence in Teaching.^[13] By the conclusion of the 2019–20 academic year, it was announced that she would be promoted to Full professor of government at Wesleyan on July 1, 2020.^[7]