Jonathan Ladd
Associate Professor
Jonathan Ladd is an associate professor in the McCourt School of Public Policy. His additional affiliations at Georgetown include a courtesy appointment in the Department of Government, faculty affiliate status with the Massive Data Institute and the Lab for Globalization and Shared Prosperity, and serving as a faculty advisor to the Institute of Politics and Public Service (i.e., "GU Politics").
In 2026, he coauthored American Presidential Campaigns in the Attention Economy, which combined polling and media content data to show the power and limits of campaign strategies that dominate the attention economy. In 2020, he coauthored Words that Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign. His first book, Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters, examined the relationship of Americans' trust in the media with party polarization and technological change. It won the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
His current work focuses on the relationship between the loss of confidence in institutions and support for democracy. To that end, he is the Principal Investigator of the American Institutional Confidence Poll, a panel survey with waves (so far) in 2018, 2021, and 2023.
During the fall 2026 semester, his walk-in office hours are Mondays 2:00-5:00pm in room #890 in the McCourt School building. Any Georgetown student can drop in then without an appointment. You do not need to contact him in advance.