Kevin Michael Wagner

Florida Atlantic University | FAU · Department of Political Science

Online social media are changing the face of politics in the United States. Beginning with a strong theoretical foundation grounded in political, communications and psychology literature, Tweeting to Power examines the effect of online social media on how people come to learn, understand and engage in politics. Gainous and Wagner propose that platf...

There is a debate in the extant literature concerning whether the Internet stimulates political participation. We examine both whether Internet use encourages traditional participation such as campaign and election centered acts, and non-traditional participation, including protest/resistance centered acts in the East Asian context. In doing so, we...

This research explores the implications of the growing use of the Internet to campaign and win elections in the United States. After exploring the historic assumptions and motivations behind the use of the Internet to campaign, the authors use election data from the 2006 midterm congressional elections and webpage ranking data from the leading web-...

There is a growing literature that examines the effects of the Internet on political participation. We seek to contribute to this literature by exploring how online social networking may stimulate online political participation. Using survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, we confirm a strong positive relationship and show that...

This historical analysis explores the development of the conflicted principles at the root of modern American Conservatism. The tenets of Classical Conservatism as expressed and developed by Edmund Burke are contrasted with the nature and concerns of Economic Liberalism based in the writings of Adam Smith. This study shows how the principles of Lib...

We investigate to what extent partisan political candidates in the United States pay attention to different issues in their campaign communication, and whether they systematically deliver messages using different types of sentiment. We analyze the 267,538 tweets issued by candidates for the U.S. Congress during the 2018 midterm elections using a co...

Academia, in much of the world, has long been disproportionately populated by men. This pattern, at least in the social sciences, may be changing. We explore the shifting gender gap in political science in Kazakhstan, and then set out to explore potential determinants of the changes as well as the resulting employment patterns. We use time-series d...

There is a considerable body of research suggesting that social media may be a primary vehicle for both the dissemination of politically dissident information and for organizing protest activity in contexts of weak governance. Researchers are beginning to focus on building a more nuanced understanding of how new media shape these processes. Using o...

Passive online media use refers to the act of merely reading and observing political information on a users’ feed. Alternatively, active use refers to the conscious decision to share information, comment, challenge, fact check, or engage in related activity. We argue that these types of social media use have fundamentally different relationships to...

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The gender dummy variable was mistakenly coded in reverse order. The interpretation treated it as (0 = Male, 1 = Female), while the actual coding was (0 = Female, 1 = Male). This had no influence on the substantive results for all other variables. The sign on the coefficients f...

en Analysts of American politics have long considered the growing power of the Latino population in the United States as a significant variable for elections. However, the assumption that Latinos will share similar political views and behaviors is, at best, unsettled with mixed results from existing studies. In this research, we use original data t...

We use original survey data from China to examine gender differences in exposure to, and the exchange of, information critical of their respective governments via the Internet and social media. Existing research suggests that men, generally, tend to be more politically engaged than women. We set out to test whether this extended to dissident politi...

We use original survey data from Malaysia to explore differences in how traditional and digital media shape the attitudes and behavior of citizens. In closed, and even semi-authoritarian, states such as Malaysia, the Internet, including social media, is often the only place for opposition-centered media to thrive. As a result, consumption of Intern...

Purpose Early information technology scholarship centered on the internet’s potential to be a democratizing force was often framed using an equalization/normalization lens arguing that either the internet was going to be an equalizing force bringing power to the masses, or it was going to be normalized into the existing power structure. The purpos...

In political regimes where traditional mass media are under state control, social networking sites may be the only place where citizens are exposed to and exchange dissident information. Despite all the attempts, complete control of social media seems to be implausible. We argue that the critical information that people see, read and share online u...

Digital information consumption has a positive effect on external political efficacy in that the Internet provides factual support for the belief that governments are responsive to the demands of citizens. The existence of the digital forum creates the perception of greater openness and transparency. This effect is likely conditional on institution...

The ability of authoritarian regimes to maintain power hinges, in part, on how well they are able to manipulate the flow of information to the masses. While authoritarian states have had success controlling traditional media, the growth of social media over the last decade has created new challenges for such regimes. The Russian experience offers a...

This study synthesizes two theoretical literatures to explain gender differences in Twitter usage and effectiveness among US Congressional candidates. The first suggests that candidates in perceived disadvantaged positions, females in this case, innovate to improve their chances of success, and the second, that female politicians often adopt stereo...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to theorize the heightened exposure to information via the internet can lead citizens to be more critical about political conditions in their countries because using social media increases the likelihood of being exposed to dissident information. Further, the authors argue that the degree to which information is...

Objectives: We analyze differences in how men and women in Latin American countries are utilizing the Internet to identify a possible regional gendered digital divide in Internet use. The extent, degree, and implications of this gender digital divide are explored across countries with varying degrees of digital freedom. Methods: We employ a series...

We examine the political changes in the Middle East as a result of the growth and penetration of the Internet and social media. Using data from the Arab Barometer, we review whether Internet activities effected the political changes around and in the Arab Spring.

We use survey data from 2006–2007 to explore the implications of Internet use on political opinion in the Middle East, arguing that the Internet has had an equalizing effect when government filtering is low. Specifically, the findings indicate that Internet use had a positive effect on political knowledge, political participation, and attitudes abo...

Online social networking sites are rapidly becoming a central component of the modern political campaign. We build a theoretical framework to explain how and why state party organizations are incorporating social networking sites-Facebook in particular-into their strategy to support their candidates. After offering some descriptive evidence doc...

There is a growing literature that examines the effects of the Internet on political participation. We seek to contribute to this literature by exploring how online social networking may stimulate online political participation. Using survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, we confirm a strong positive relationship and show that...

Going beyond theory and guess-based forecasts, this book systematically explores and measures the implications of the growing use of the Internet in the American political landscape. The authors show that the Internet changes the way voters process information and explain how the use of the Internet is causing a marked shift not just in who votes,...

Using the shifting meaning of the Guarantee Clause, this paper illustrates how the judiciary subtly redefines the meaning of the Constitution to meet the demands of a dynamic society allowing shifts to occur gradually in the governing structure. Government structure and authority, despite being based on a fixed written constitution, has changed and...

This research explores the implications of the adoption of term limits on elected officials in Florida. After exploring the historic assumptions and motivations behind the term-limits movement, we test the assumption that term limits produce more competition for elective office. Using election data provided by the state of Florida, a multipronged e...

Like every state except Nebraska, the structure of the legislative branch in Florida is similar to that of the national Congress. While there have been multiple changes and two significant revisions of the state constitution since 1838, the legislative branch continues to anchor state politics in Florida. The bicameral structure of the legislature...

This research creates a theoretical framework for understanding the effect of Internet voting on the electorate. Based on standard Downsian rational choice voting theory, we claim that Internet voting lowers the cost of voting for certain voting demographics based upon race, age, and income. We further contend that this electoral advantage may crys...

span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial; color: #000000;" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"This research creates a theoretical framework for understanding the effect of Internet voting on the electorate. Based on standard Downsian rational choice voting theory, we claim that Internet voting lowers the cost of voting for certain voting demogra...

The purpose of this article is to point out that the standard statistical inference procedure in public administration is defective and should be replaced. The standard classicist approach to producing and reporting empirical findings is not appropriate for the type of data we use and does not report results in a useful manner for researchers and p...