BIO
I am a political psychologist specializing in extremism, public opinion, racial and ethnic politics, and quantitative methods. More specifically, my work explores what extremism is and what encourages and discourages extremism. I consider both a general approach to extremism and several specific kinds – including racial extremism, partisan extremism, and populism. My research on extremism relies on various methods, using lab experiments, quasi-experiments, survey experiments, text-as-data, surveys, and big data from Google and Twitter. I teach classes on American politics, research methods, extremism, the media and politics, and public opinion. In these classes, I combine lecture, active learning activities, and a variety of teaching strategies to help students learn material in grounded and applied ways. My goal is for my students to develop the tools to continue learning even after my courses have finished.
Education
- Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University, 2018
- M.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University, 2015.
- B.A. in Political Science from Brigham Young University, 2013
Publications
- Busby, Ethan, Kirk A. Hawkins, and Joshua R. Gubler. 2019. “Framing and Blame Attribution in Populist Rhetoric“. Journal of Politics 81(2):616-630.
- Rothschild, Jacob, Adam Howat, Richard Shafranek, and Ethan Busby. 2019. “Pigeonholing Partisans: Mass Stereotypes of Party Supporters and Partisan Polarization“. Political Behavior 41(2): 423-443.
- Busby, Ethan and James N. Druckman. 2018. “Football and Public Opinion: A Partial Replication and Extension“. Journal of Experimental Political Science 5(1):4-10.
- Busby, Ethan, James N. Druckman, and Alexandria Fredendall. 2017. “The Political Relevance of Irrelevant Events”. Journal of Politics 79(1): 346-350.