Douglas A. Van Belle is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. He was the first person to have served as the president of both the Foreign Policy Analysis and the International Communication research sections in the International Studies Association.nbsp;He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief of International Studies Perspectives and Foreign Policy Analysis and has conducted extensive research on media systems and information flows in international politics. He created the press freedom data set that precedes this study, to examine the effect of media freedom on international conflict, as exemplified by "Press Freedom and the Democratic Peace" ( Journal… of Peace Research ). That initial analysis was expanded to complete Press Freedom and Global Politics (Praeger), which provides the foundation for the extension conducted here. Studies of popular media and political theory led to the undergraduate textbook, A Novel Approach to Politics, which is now in its 4th edition. Also, before returning to the analysis of media freedom with this project, he conducted a series of studies examining the relationship between information flows, disasters, and foreign aid, including Media, Bureaucracies and Foreign Aid (Palgrave: With Potter and Rioux).
Spurred on by the blatant discrimination inherent in the statement "Trix are for Kids," at age 4 Ken Mash attempted to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rabbit and other animals similarly situated. After three errors in one inning squashed his dreams of playing for the Mets, his overactive justice complex led him to pursue a career as a lawyer and politician. While earning his B.A. in political science he discovered what those jobs were really like. Thus, Ken's next degree was in mixology. Eighteen months later, his fianc�e informed him that she was leaving town to do graduate work and that she would go either with him or without him. A couple of degrees later, he is currently… a political science professor at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, where he is co-director of the honors program and the pre-law advisor. He has delivered numerous papers and talks on American politics, constitutional law, and civil liberties, and he is very active in the faculty association. He currently resides in Nanticoke, PA, with his wife and four children where he is now content in knowing that his parents were mistaken when, as a child, they told him that he was wasting his time watching T.V. and movies.