Matthew R. Kerbel is professor of Political Science at Villanova University. Over the past two decades, he has written extensively about the relationship between television and politics, a subject that first caught his interest when he worked as a television news writer for public broadcasting. His books on the subject include:

• Remote and Controlled: Media Politics in a Cynical Age
• If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy of Television News

which explore the impacts of television on the political process. In netroots, his seventh book, Kerbel considers the possibility that Internet politics will rekindle the relationship between politicians and ordinary people that was largely lost in the television age. A graduate of University of Michigan, he lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania with his wife, Adrienne, and his daughter, Gabrielle.