Dustin Carnahan
Assistant Professor | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
Dustin Carnahan's research focuses on how citizens engage with the political information environment.
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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 (3)
Research
Education/Learning
Political Organization
Areas of Expertise (3)
Political Communications
Political Science
Political Information
Accomplishments (2)
Michigan State University ComArtSci Teaching Fellow (professional)
2022 - 2024
Best paper in Political Behavior (professional)
2013
Education (3)
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 (4)
- Midwest Political Science Association
- American Political Science Association
- National Communication Association
- International Communication Association
Links (4)
News (5)
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.
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.
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.
How Misinformation Lit The Fire Under A Year Of Political Chaos In Michigan
NPR online
2021-02-01
"Anytime you're in a position of uncertainty, you're going to be more willing to accept things that are false or misleading, so long as they just make you feel better," says Dustin Carnahan, who studies misinformation as an associate professor of Communications at Michigan State University. "And I don't think that was unique to us."
The truth behind fake news and politics on social media
MSU Today online
2020-06-02
This “infodemic,” as Dustin Carnahan calls it, puts misleading information front and center —adding fuel to politically contentious fires and escalating social issues to the level of crises.
Event Appearances (3)
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 (3)
Which Misinformation to Believe? A Conjoint Experiment
Trifecta Initiative Core Area funding $2,000
2020
Estimating the Impact of Immediate Versus Delayed Corrections on Belief Accuracy
Trifecta Initiative Core Area funding $2,000
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 $5,000
2020
Journal Articles (5)
The madness of misperceptions: evaluating the ways anger contributes to misinformed beliefs
Journal Of Communication2023 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.
Promoting the Youth Vote: The Role of Informational Cues and Social Pressure
Political Behavior2022 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.
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 Communication2022 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.
Correcting the Misinformed: The Effectiveness of Fact-checking Messages in Changing False Beliefs
Political Communication2021 While research consistently shows that fact-checking improves belief accuracy, debates persist about how to best measure and interpret expressions of factual beliefs. We argue that this has led to ambiguity in interpreting the results of studies on fact-checking, including whether fact-checking effects in fact decrease confidently held false beliefs.
Do Corrective Effects Last? Results from a Longitudinal Experiment on Beliefs Toward Immigration in the U.S.
Political Behavior2021 Although interest in the efficacy of efforts to correct false beliefs has peaked in recent years, the extent to which corrective effects endure over time remains understudied. Drawing on insights from related literatures in the psychology of belief, persuasion and media effects to inform theoretical expectations, this study uses a longitudinal experiment to observe both contemporaneous and long-term changes in participants’ belief accuracy in response to corrective information within an ongoing, contentious political debate.
