After completing his doctoral work in political science at Northwestern University, Professor Althaus joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1996 with a joint appointment in the Political Science and Communication departments. He is a faculty affiliate of UIUC's Cline Center for Democracy.

Professor Althaus's research and teaching interests center on the communication processes by which ordinary citizens become (in theory, at least) empowered to exercise popular sovereignty in democratic societies, as well as on the communication processes by which the opinions of these citizens are conveyed to government officials, who (in theory, at least) must transform the will of the people into political action. His work therefore focuses on three areas of inquiry: (1) the processes and constraints that shape the journalistic construction of news about public affairs, (2) the processes and constraints that influence how news audiences receive and utilize public affairs information, and (3) the channels of communication that allow individual members of a polity to speak in a collective voice as a public. He has particular interests in opinion surveys as channels for mass communication and political representation, the impact of strategic communication activities on news coverage and public opinion, the psychology of information processing, the political impact of “new media” and Internet technologies, communication concepts in democratic theory, and the quantitative analysis of political discourse.

Professor Althaus serves on the editorial boards of Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Political Communication, Critical Review, and Public Opinion Quarterly. His research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Communication Research, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Journal of Politics, PS: Political Science & Politics, and Political Communication. His book on the political uses of opinion surveys in democratic societies, Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People (Cambridge University Press, 2003) , was awarded a 2004 Goldsmith Book Prize by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and a 2004 David Easton Book Prize by the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. He was recently named a 2004-5 Beckman Associate by the UIUC Center for Advanced Studies, and a 2003-4 Helen Corley Petit Scholar by the UIUC College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.