Allison Betus
Alumni- Biography
Allison Betus is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication. She earned an M.A. in Psychology from the New School for Social Research in New York. Betus also holds a B.A. in Psychology from State University of New York at Purchase.
Betus’ research interests include prejudice formation, the impact of perpetrator identity on perceptions of terrorism, radicalization, deradicalization, and member recruitment and retention in extremist groups.
Betus’ expertise includes data analysis using SPSS, SAS, and STATA. She is also experienced with Nvivo, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, Unity and Windows Movie Maker
She has also spent time working in the private sector as a Market Analyst. Betus is a member of the American Society of Criminology, the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Social and Personality Psychology.
Select Media Mentions:
2017 MSNBC with Ari Melber, July 2.
2017 Think Progress, June 19.
2017 Cato Institute, April 13.
2017 Reason, March 24.
2017 The Independent, March 13.
Kearns, E., Betus, A., Lemieux, A. (2017, March 13) Yes, the media do underreport some terrorist attacks. Just not the ones most people think of. The Washington Post.
- Publications
Kearns, E., Betus, A., Lemieux, A. (2019). “When Data Doesn’t Matter: Exploring Public Perceptions of Terrorism.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, DOI. (January).
Kearns, E., Betus, A., Lemieux, A. (2019). “Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others?” Justice Quarterly. (January).
Betus, A., Jablonski, M., Lemieux, A. (2017). “Terrorism and Intergroup Communication” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Intergroup Communications. (October).
Presentations:
Betus, A. Kearns, E., & Lemieux, A., (2019) “When Data Doesn’t Matter: Exploring Public Perceptions of Threats.” Poster Presentation, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference, Portland, Oregon.
Betus, A. (2018). “Terrorist or Assailant? An Examination of How the Media Describes Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists” Paper Presentation, The American Society of Criminology’s
74rd Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA.
Betus, A. (2018) “Terrorist or Mentally Ill? How Does the Media Depict the Perpetrators of Terror Attacks?” Poster Presentation, The Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference Atlanta GA.
Kearns, E., Betus, A., Lemieux, A. (2017) “When Data Don’t Matter: Exploring Public Perceptions of Terrorism.” Panel Presentation Experimenting With Terrorism The American Society of Criminology’s 73rd Annual Meeting Philadelphia, PA.
Betus, A., Masyn, K., Kearns, E. Saleem, M., & Lemieux, A.F. (2017). “Heil Hitler” versus “Allahu Akbar:” An experimental approach to how terrorism is differentially perceived and labeled. Poster presentation at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. San Antonio, TX.
Betus, A. (2017) “A Multimodal Approach to Analyzing Online Messaging of Extremist Groups.” Paper Presentation Violent Extremism, Terrorism, and the Internet: Contemporary Issues and Cases, International Studies Association Conference, Baltimore, MD