Robert Wyatt's Biography

Opryland Hotel, Summer 2003

Robert O. Wyatt is professor of journalism and founding director of the Office of Communication Research at  at Middle Tennessee State University and of the MTSU Poll, a twice-yearly tracking survey. He is now conducting survey research and working on the MTSU Poll as a post-retirement scholar.

Wyatt's research interests include public opinion, religion and media, international communication, political communication, and attitudes toward free expression. He has conducted a series of award-winning research projects on these subjects with a variety of scholars in the United States and abroad. 

Wyatt was book review editor for the Nashville Tennessean from 1978 to 1993. He has chaired the Pulitzer Prize jury in general nonfiction four times, most recently in 1999. Wyatt is listed in Who's Who in America. He is also an Episcopal priest.

In 1991, Wyatt directed a nationwide survey of public attitudes toward the First Amendment sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The study was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for Research About Journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists. Results were published in Free Expression and the American Public (Washington, DC: ASNE, 1991).

Wyatt's ASNE free expression study was replicated in Israel among both Arabs and Jews under the direction of Elihu Katz at the Louis Guttman Israel Institute of Applied Social Research in 1992. Other replications took place in Russia in 1994 under the supervision the late Nugzar Betaneli at the Institute for the Sociology of Parliamentarism and in Hong Kong, in cooperation with Ernest F. Martin, then at Hong Kong Baptist University. 

A book reporting on these surveys, Free Expression and Five Democratic Publics: Support for Individual and Media Rights in the United States, Israel, Russia, and Hong Kong (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press) was published in spring 2004. Co-authors are Julie L. Andsager of the University of Iowa and Ernest F. Martin of Virginia Commonwealth University.

One section of the ASNE study dealt with the reasons people fail to speak out and say what is on their minds. An article based on that battery of questions was selected for the Worcester Prize for the Best Article of 1996, presented at the meeting of World Association for Public Opinion Research. The article was:

Wyatt, Robert O., Katz, Elihu, Levinsohn, Hanna, & Al-Haj, Majid. (1996). The dimensions of expression inhibition: Perceptions of obstacles to free speech in three cultures. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8, 229-247.

Wyatt's recent research has focused on how much and how freely people talk about politics and how political talk is related to news use, opinion quality, and political participation. In this project, his collaborators are Joohan Kim of Yonsei University, Korea, and Elihu Katz of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Articles from that study have been published in Political Communication, the Journal of Communication, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. He has also collaborated recently with David Fan of the University of Minnesota on a series of studies seeking to explain the effects of press reporting on public confidence in major social and political institutions.

In 1994, Wyatt was visiting professor of international communication at the University of Caen, France. He has lectured widely to professional and academic bodies in the United States as well as in Russia, France, India, Korea, and Israel.

Wyatt holds a bachelor's degree in English from the University of the South at Sewanee, TN, a master's degree in communication from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and a master's and doctorate in English from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. He also studied in 1969 and 2002 at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (Episcopal), Evanston, IL, receiving a certificate of study. He served on that school's Board of Trustees from 1996 to 2001. He is also a trustee of Episcopal Charities and Community Services and St. Augustine College in Chicago.

Wyatt received a master's in theological studies from Vanderbilt University's Divinity School in fall 2003, where he was awarded the university's highest academic distinction, the Founder's Medal. In December 2004, Wyatt was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Chicago. He is rector of St. Helena's Episcopal Church in Burr Ridge, IL.

His scholarship has been published in Communication Research, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, the Journal of Communication, Political Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Current Research in Film, Mass Comm Review, the Journal of Public Relations Research, and Newspaper Research Journal.

Wyatt has taught courses in mass communication theory, public opinion, media and society, media research, and news-editorial journalism. He has also served as a survey research adviser for the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He was adjunct professor of church history at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he has taught a course on the Reformation in England. 

With the Rt. Rev. William D. Persell, Bishop of Chicago,
after ordination to priesthood at St. James Cathedral, Chicago, Dec. 2004

At home in East Nashville, Christmas 1999

For a peek at Wyatt's Photo Gallery, click here.

To download Wyatt's vita in Adobe Acrobat format, click here.

[Home] [Courses] [Literature Search] [Biography] [Vita] [Gallery]