Ashley Muddiman

Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

Rhetoric & Political Communication

Dr. Ashley Muddiman earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research broadly explores political media effects. More specifically, she studies political incivility, including citizens’ perceptions of incivility as well as the effects of political incivility in online settings. She also is a faculty research associate with the Center for Media Engagement (CME), which is housed at the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work with CME has explored shifting norms in digital news spaces, for instance how journalists and news users engage with partisan incivility in online comments, how journalists can intervene in comment sections to make them a bit less uncivil, and how clickbait headlines set expectations for news users. Her work has been published in the Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, and the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, among other publications. Dr. Muddiman teaches courses at the graduate and undergraduate level, including courses in political communication, mass media and politics, new media and politics, political campaigns, and introduction to research methods.