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About Michael
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. He serves as Director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, with additional faculty 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-Lincoln in 1998 and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University in 2006. His career began in broadcasting at age 14 as a part-time DJ and news anchor for KMHL 1400-AM in Marshall, Minnesota. He worked as a political news reporter for CBS31/1470 WMBD in Peoria, Illinois, and KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska, and served as press secretary on a congressional campaign in 2000. Prior to joining UW-Madison in 2012 as an assistant professor, he held positions at the University of Delaware from 2006 to 2007 and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2007 to 2012, where he was tenured in 2015, promoted to full professor in 2019, named Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor in 2023, and awarded the Evjue Chair in 2024.
Wagner's research in political communication examines how experiences in the information ecology influence beliefs, public policy preferences, and civic and political participation. His work explores the effects of mediated political messages on attitudes and behaviors, interactions between psychological and contextual factors, news logics in political coverage, and industry-academic collaborations. He employs panel surveys, experiments, content analysis, interviews, and focus groups. Wagner has authored or co-authored books including Battleground: Asymmetric Communication Ecologies and the Erosion of Civil Society in Wisconsin (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Political Behavior of the American Electorate, 15th Edition (CQ Press, 2022), and Mediated Democracy: Politics, the News and Citizenship in the 21st Century (CQ Press, 2020). He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Science, Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Communication, including "Independence by Permission: Industry-Academic Collaboration and Meta’s U.S. 2020 Election Project" (Science, 2023). His research has secured over $11 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, Knight Foundation, and others. Wagner has earned the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2019), five university-wide teaching honors, top paper awards from the International Communication Association and AEJMC, and editorial roles as founding editor of the Forum in Political Communication and associate editor at Public Opinion Quarterly. He has mentored over 10 Ph.D. students to placement at institutions including Cornell University and Rutgers University and delivered more than 350 public lectures.
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