Rate My Professor Michael Wagner

Michael Wagner is the William T. Evjue Distinguished Chair for the Wisconsin Idea and Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also directs the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal and serves as Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He holds affiliate appointments in the Department of Political Science and the La Follette School of Public Affairs. Wagner earned a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Nebraska in 1998 and a Ph.D. in political science from Indiana University in 2006. Prior to joining UW-Madison in 2012, he was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2007-2012) and the University of Delaware (2006-2007). Before academia, he worked as a political news reporter for stations in Peoria, Illinois, and Omaha, Nebraska, and as a press secretary on a congressional campaign in 2000. At UW-Madison, he advanced from assistant to associate professor with tenure in 2015 and to full professor in 2019, and was named Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor in 2023.

Wagner's research investigates how elements of the information environment interact with individual factors to shape political beliefs, preferences, participation, and behavior. His four main lines of inquiry include the effects of mediated political messages, interactions of psychological and contextual factors, influences of news logics on coverage, and industry-academic collaborations. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in top journals such as Science (“Independence by Permission: Industry-Academic Collaboration and Meta’s U.S. 2020 Election Project,” 2023), Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Communication, as well as books like Battleground: Asymmetric Communication Ecologies and the Erosion of Civil Society in Wisconsin (co-authored, Cambridge University Press, 2022), Mediated Democracy: Politics, the News and Citizenship in the 21st Century (co-authored, CQ Press, 2020), and Political Behavior of the American Electorate (multiple editions, CQ Press). Wagner has secured over $11 million in research funding and delivered more than 350 public lectures worldwide. He has won five university-wide teaching awards, including the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2019), and top research paper awards from the International Communication Association and AEJMC. Wagner has advised more than 10 Ph.D. dissertations, moderated debates for U.S. Senate, Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Attorney General races, and held editorial positions such as Founding Editor of the Forum in Political Communication (2016-2023) and Associate Editor of Public Opinion Quarterly (2021-present).