Celeste Wagner

Celeste Wagner’s research examines how and why everyday people embrace or resist social change, with a focus on gender issues and feminism. She also studies media reception more broadly, including how audiences engage with news and entertainment. She has conducted panel studies, interviews, virtual focus groups, nationally representative surveys, survey experiments, and other cross-national mixed-method research. Her recent publications analyze feminist advocacy in Argentina and the U.S. (Journal of Communication), reception of Turkish TV dramas in Argentina (Journal of Communication), global communication as epistemology (Media, Culture & Society), and emotional experiences with news and misinformation in the U.S. (Journalism, Digital Journalism). Her coauthored book, The Patina of Distrust, is forthcoming from MIT Press.

Her dissertation, which forms the basis for her current book project, received four awards from the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association in global communication and social change, political communication, and international and intercultural communication, including the NCA-wide Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award. She also received the 2025 Distinguished Achievement in Research Award from Rutgers University’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies and was named the 2023 Junior International Educator of the Year by the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.

Wagner's other current projects involve how liberals and conservatives in the U.S. interpret the achievements and drawbacks of #MeToo based on a panel study and interviews; how Americans evaluated sexual harassment accusations against politicians over time based on panel data; how liberal and conservative young women interpret women’s issues through social media consumption based on focus groups, and more.

Ph.D., Communication, University of Pennsylvania
M.A., Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Licenciatura, Comunicación, Universidad de San Andrés