Dustin Carnahan

Assistant Professor Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Dustin Carnahan's research focuses on how citizens engage with the political information environment.

Contact

Michigan State University

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Biography

Dustin Carnahan is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Ohio State University. His research focuses on how citizens engage with the political information environment and how these practices influence their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.

Recently, Professor Carnahan has focused on how communication processes can contribute to the formation of misperceptions and the effectiveness of fact-checking messages in combatting misinformation. His work has been published in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Political Communication, Political Behavior, and The International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning
Political Organization

Areas of Expertise

Political Communications
Political Science
Political Information

Accomplishments

Michigan State University ComArtSci Teaching Fellow

2022 - 2024

Best paper in Political Behavior

2013

Education

The Ohio State University

Ph.D.

Political Science

2015

The Ohio State University

M.A.

Political Science

2009

Miami University

B.A.

Political Science, Speech Communication

2006

Affiliations

  • Midwest Political Science Association
  • American Political Science Association
  • National Communication Association
  • International Communication Association

News

Local vs. national news: The differences between the two

WXYZ  online

2023-01-27

“Local news is strong in presenting factual cases of what’s actually going on,” Dustin Carnahan previously told 7 Action News.

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Election deniers fail in battleground states, but ‘Act III’ awaits in 2024

MLive.com  online

2022-11-16

The midterms were “pushback against Trumpism,” said Dustin Carnahan, a Michigan State University assistant professor who studies misinformation and political communication.

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State of the State podcast explores social media impact on spread of misinformation

WKAR  online

2021-04-23

On this month’s State of the State podcast from MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, hosts Arnold Weinfeld, Charley Ballard, and Matt Grossmann welcome MSU Assistant Professor of Communication Dustin Carnahan to the program to discuss his research into political information seeking behavior with an emphasis on the role of communication processes in forwarding and correcting misinformation.

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Event Appearances

Assessing the effect of message characteristics on belief in, perceived credibility of, and intent to share factual claims online: A conjoint analysis

Annual Conference of the International Communication Association  Paris, France

The madness of misperceptions: Evaluating the ways anger contributes to misinformed beliefs

Annual Conference of the International Communication Association  Paris, France

The influence of message characteristics on engagement with factual claims

Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association  Chicago, IL

Research Grants

Which Misinformation to Believe? A Conjoint Experiment

Trifecta Initiative Core Area funding

2020

Estimating the Impact of Immediate Versus Delayed Corrections on Belief Accuracy

Trifecta Initiative Core Area funding

2020

Promoting the Youth Vote in a Global Pandemic: Assessing the Outcomes of Civic Training and Positive Social Pressure to Vote

Social Science Research Council, Rapid Response Research Grant

2020

Journal Articles

The madness of misperceptions: evaluating the ways anger contributes to misinformed beliefs

Journal Of Communication

2023

Drawing from established theoretical traditions in cognitive consistency, motivated reasoning, heuristic–systematic processing, and the anger-activism model, we extend existing work linking anger with misperceptions by specifying three distinct ways anger might contribute to the formation of misperceptions: Increasing reliance on partisan heuristics, influencing political information-seeking behavior, and moderating the influence of partisan media exposure.

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Promoting the Youth Vote: The Role of Informational Cues and Social Pressure

Political Behavior

2022

Young voters, including college students, turnout less than older citizens—particularly in non-presidential elections. We examine two promising intervention strategies in the 2018 midterm elections: information cues and social pressure. Additionally, we consider whether voting information and social pressure to vote spread to others through social ties.

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What should I believe? A conjoint analysis of the influence of message characteristics on belief in, perceived credibility of, and intent to share political posts

Journal of Communication

2022

Research on misinformation and misperceptions often investigates claims that have already reached a critical mass, resulting in little understanding of why certain claims gain widespread belief while others fall into obscurity.

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