Dustin Carnahan is a PhD Candidate in American Politics with a research focus on political communication, public opinion, campaigns and elections, and research methods.  His dissertation, titled “A Motivational Approach toward Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Partisan Selective Exposure” investigates the ways in which motivation functions as a moderating force in the relationship between information exposure and political attitudes.

Dustin was awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation in March 2013.   This grant helped him engage in data collection Qualtrecs in order to extend and improve his data for his dissertation.  His original data collection involves a standalone survey and a large scale survey experiment. Using a novel survey experimental design, he analyzed how information-processing goals impact both the extent to which citizens exhibit partisan selectivity in their information-seeking behavior as well as how these goals ultimately moderate the potential consequences - such as political polarization - of such behavior.  

Dustin is interested in public opinion and how people come to their decisions and judgments about voting and engaging in politics. His current work investigates motivations.  He believes that people can engage in identical behaviors for very different reasons, so he is focusing on why people seek out information and how that impacts them.  Dustin argues that the perceived negative impact of partisan selectivity is not universal, but instead conditional on why people are engaging in such behavior in the first place.

Dustin has published in three places.  His co-authored piece (with Kelly Garrett) in Political Behavior (2013), examines the extent to which citizens are engaging in partisan selectivity in their political information searches.  You can also read his publications in The Change Election: Money, Mobilization and Persuasion in the 2008 Federal Elections (2011) and Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science (2011). His dissertation committee includes Thomas Nelson (chair), Kathleen McGraw and R. Kelly Garrett (communications).

Dustin’s interest in Political Science began while he was an undergrad student at Miami University.  He took a Mass Media and American Politics class and found the topics to resonate with him.  At that time, right after 9/11 and the beginning of two wars, he began to realize how important it was to study Political Science.  After his undergrad, he worked at the Franklin County Clerk of Courts and on political campaigns, but was ultimately drawn back to academia to get his PhD.  

Dustin is currently on the job market.  For more information, visit his personal website.