Joshua Meyer-Gutbrod is teaching faculty at the University of South Carolina, Department of Political Science. Josh’s research explores the impacts of partisan polarization and the nationalization of American politics by examining the rhetoric of state-level politicians relative to their national counterparts. Conventional wisdom suggests that national partisan division and the nationalization of politics will produce consistent polarization and partisan rhetoric across state and federal institutions. Through the use of text analysis, Josh explores inconsistencies in nationalization across state legislative candidates, with the goal of identifying potential issues that undermine the polarization of American politics. To accomplish these goals, Josh maintains an ongoing archive of state legislative campaign websites from 2016-2023 that provided a critical tool for analyzing rhetoric across the states. To see more on this project and other projects from the research team, please go to: https://digitalcampaignsproject.uofsccreate.org/ .

Josh received his PhD from Cornell University. Before coming to South Carolina, he served as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow under the SBE program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research has been published in Political Communication, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly.