Abigail Hemmen

Biography

Abigail is a fifth-year Ph.D candidate in the University of Notre Dame’s Political Science Department. Her work focuses on representation, social media, political messaging, political knowledge, controversial speech, and the online relationship between political elites and the public, especially at the state level.

Her dissertation, Online Style, explores how social media has shaped the relationship between state legislators and their constituents. Specifically, it asks which personal and institutional factors encourage legislators to maintain a social media presence, whether online legislators experience political benefits or costs, and how the public responds to legislators’ social media posts

Her other work is often near the intersection of social media, public attitudes, and the impact of political messaging. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Illusory interparty disagreement: Partisans agree on what hate speech to censor but do not know it” gauges how the public responds to hate speech online, as well as how they expect outpartisans to react.

Before attending Notre Dame, Abigail graduated with her B.A. in Political Science from Indiana State University.

Areas of Interest

Research: Representation, State legislators, State politics, Political messaging, Social media, Constituent-legislator relationships, Political knowledge, Controversial speech

Teaching: State & local government, Representation, Undergraduate research methods, Political psychology, Social media & politics, Media & politics

Methodology

Experimental survey design, Sentiment analysis, Mixed methods