Samuel C. Rhodes, Ph.D. Political Scientist

About Me

​​I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I teach courses on American politics, government and quantitative political analysis.

My research centers on political communication and political behavior in the United States. I am especially interested in the role that political misinformation (i.e., “fake news”) plays in the American political system. I also examine the effects of unlimited and undisclosed donations (i.e., "dark money") in American elections.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Rhodes, Samuel. 2024. “Narrow Margins and Misinformation: The Impact of Sharing Fake News in Close Contests.” Social Sciences 13(11): 571. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13110571

Rhodes, Samuel C. 2022. "Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers and Fake News: How Social Media Conditions Individuals to be Less Critical of Political Misinformation." Political Communication 39(1): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2021.1910887

Rhodes, Samuel C., Michael M. Franz, Erika Franklin Fowler and Travis N. Ridout. 2019. "The Role of Dark Money Disclosure on Candidate Evaluations and Viability." Election Law Journal 18(2): 175-190. https://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2018.0499

Lorenzano, Kyle J., Miles J. P. Sari, Colin H. Storm, Samuel C. Rhodes and Porismita Borah. 2018. "Challenges for an SNS-based Public Sphere in 2016." Online Information Review 42(7): 1106-1123. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-12-2017-0352

In 2024, I was honored to receive the Golden Apple Award for Professor of the Year and the Provost Teaching Innovation Award. These were awarded in recognition of my creative use of video games to teach collective action theory in my special topics course on political parties.

For more information on my semester-long experiment using computer simulations in the classroom, please see this article from The Comenian: https://comenian.org/11482/community/moravians-hands-on-political-party-learning-experience-in-minecraft/

"One of the reasons why I use video games as teaching tools [is] because it’s also teaching me something about how students operate and think beyond the scope of the assignment. It’s a little miniature version of a political universe,” said Rhodes. “​​Politics is war by other means, and that’s what the Democrats and Republicans are engaged in as they’re trying to outmaneuver one another, to outsmart one another, to find a message or a particular strategy that the other side might not have thought about.”

​​Prior to beginning my graduate studies, I worked for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and the Maine State Legislature.

I obtained my Ph.D. in political science from Washington State University in 2019 and my B.A. in political science from Shippensburg University in 2010.

​​​​I am a national park enthusiast and love to travel to new states and countries. As a devotee of government, I am attempting to visit every state capitol building in the United States.