School of Social & Political Sciences

Brian J. Fogarty joins the School in January 2015 as Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences for the Q-Step programme. Most recently, he was Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Additionally, Brian worked as Mentoring Faculty-in-Residence at the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) Summer Institutes at Duke University (2008) and the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (2009).

Brian’s research focuses on studying the news media as a strategic actor in politics and as a political institution within the American political system. By its nature, this work is at the intersection of institutional and behavioural research in American politics. He takes both theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding how the news media operate as an institution within American politics. Theoretically, he has used game theoretic models to explore the media’s strategic interactions with government in papers published in the Journal of Theoretical Politics and Politics & Policy. Empirically, he has used cross-sectional, time series, and experimental data to study the political news media. Much of his published empirical research focuses on how the local news media cover members of Congress. This work has appeared in such journals as Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Communication, and American Politics Research. He has also published quantitative methods work in Political Analysis and Social Science Research. His central research interest in quantitative analysis is with cross-sectional and longitudinal count data.

Brian is currently involved in several large research projects with colleagues throughout the U.S. In one, he is investigating how the American press covers voter fraud during national elections and the potential ramifications for the public’s beliefs of fraud and trust in the electoral system. Another project focuses on how the American national news media cover individual justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. A third project looks at U.S. institutional agenda setting effects on vice issues – illegal drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling – over the past several decades. Most recently, Brian has received research funding to study how the local, national, and international press has framed the Michael Brown shooting and protests in Ferguson, MO (which occurred two miles from his previous university). Brian is excited to expand his research agenda with the Q-Step programme and the Political Communication group at Glasgow. 

Brian has taught undergraduate and graduate quantitative methods and formal theory courses since 2005. On the undergraduate level, this has consisted of research design and basic bivariate and multivariate statistical analysis. On the graduate level, he has mainly taught categorical and limited dependent variables including binary, ordered, and nominal choice models, selection models, event duration models, count models, and time series models. Brian looks forward to working with the other Q-Step staff in adding quantitative methods training to existing courses and developing new courses for the School.    

Brian received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill in 2005. He also received quantitative methods and formal theory training at the first EITM Summer Institute in 2002 at Harvard University and during the 2003-2004 academic year at Columbia University. Brian also received his M.A. in Political Science in 2001 from UNC and has undergraduate degrees in Political Science and History from the State University of New York – Geneseo.

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First published: 11 December 2014