About Annelise

With more than a dozen years of experience working at the intersection of public policy, communication, and public affairs, Annelise is an expert at analyzing how organizations and stakeholders tell their story and meet their policy goals in a digital space. She is recently a research fellow at the Library of Congress, working on a project to detail the history and currently trajectory of digital politics in Congress and what that means for congressional capacity, media relations, and political reputation-making. She is also an assistant professor in the Martin School for Public Policy at the University of Kentucky doing research on public policy within Congress, with an emphasis on how new media platforms shape policymaking.

Her recent book, Tweeting is Leading, explains how senators use social media to build a reputation that matches the expectations of the constituents they aim to please. She analyzes senators’ communication on Twitter, describing what influences digital behavior and assessing resulting political agendas. The book uses two years of Senate tweets to illustrate how senators communicate their priorities for representation and make strategic communication choices motivated by political goals and their digital constituency.

She is a faculty fellow and former manager for the Policy Agendas Project, which collects and tracks policy data. Additionally, she spent more than six years at news organizations such as National Journal, Congressional Quarterly and the San Francisco Chronicle, and worked as a press assistant for the Oklahoma Lt. Governor.

She received her PhD and MA from the University of Texas, and BAs from the University of Oklahoma in both Political Science and Journalism.

Annelise currently splits time between Lexington and DC with her husband and her son, Teddy (aspiring T-Rex! pictured at left).