Prof. Peter Beattie

Peter Beattie is an assistant professor in the Masters of Global Political Economy Programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the role of ideas and information in political economy. His book, Social Evolution, Political Psychology, and the Media in Democracy: The Invisible Hand in the U.S. Marketplace of Ideas, describes the role the news media currently plays, contrasting it with the role it is supposed to play within democratic theory. Influences from the demand side (political psychological biases that affect how users of news media interpret information) and from the supply side (political economic pressures affecting what information and interpretations are offered by the news media) distort the marketplace of ideas, or the ecology of information, and frustrate the promise of democracy. His most recent research applies “elective affinity” theory, that psychological traits influence the development of political ideology, to East Asia.