Reminder: Deadline for abstract submissions to the Midwest Association Public Opinion Researchers Annual Conference in Chicago is June 30th

MAPOR is a great conference for graduate students, as it has a very high acceptance rate for student papers and provides good feedback for aspiring scholars. Many OSU graduate student papers presented at AAPOR have found their way into print. Below is an announcement on how to submit a paper proposal (300 words or less) by June 30th. In addition, students can enter their full papers into a competition in September for a prestigious best paper prize given out by the association each year.

 

MAPOR 2013

Submission deadline: June 30

Don't forget to submit your abstract for the 2013 MAPOR conference to be held in Chicago, November 22-23, 2013! The call for papers, description of the student paper competition, and the new online abstract submission website are accessible at www.mapor.org.

 

We are excited to announce that our keynote speaker for the conference will be Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.   Additionally, Michael Siciliano (University of Illinois at Chicago) we will be teaching a short course: 'An Introduction to the Measurement and Analysis of Networks'.  Be on the lookout for more information about the conference this summer.

 

Abstracts for papers, posters, or panels are due by midnight on June 30 and can be submitted at http://www.mapor.org/AbstractSubmission.html.

OSU COPS members at ICA

In London for ICA later this month?  Don't miss these presentations by COPS members (bolded names):

Ellithorpe, M. E., Esralew, S., & Holbert, R. L. (2013). Putting the "self" in self-deprecation: When deprecating humor about minorities is acceptable. Paper accepted to the International Communication Association conference in London, UK.

Garrett, R. K., Johnson, B., Neo, R., & Dal, A.. (2013). Implications of pro- and counter-attitudinal information exposure for affective polarization. Paper accepted to the International Communication Association conference, Political Communication Division. London, UK.

Lee, J. (2013). Are some people less influenced by others’ comments?: The role of need for cognition and internal political self-efficacy in impression formation. International Communication Association (ICA), London, UK.

Lee, J. & Song, H. (2013). Why do people post news through social networking sites?: A focus on technology adoption, media bias, and partisanship strength. Paper Accepted for presentation for the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association at the 2013 annual meeting in London, UK. * Top 3 Student paper award 

Song, H. & Eveland., W. P., Jr. (2013). The Structure of Communication Networks Matters: How Network Diversity, Centrality, and Context Influence Political Ambivalence, Participation, and Knowledge. Paper Accepted for presentation for Political Communication Division of the International Communication Association at the 2013 annual meeting in London, UK.

Song, H. (2013). Media and Economic Voting in 2008 U.S. Presidential Election: Beyond Sociotropic and Egotropic Dichotomies. Paper Accepted for presentation for Mass Communication Division of the International Communication Association at the 2013 annual meeting in London, UK.

Weeks, B.E. (2013). Online search behavior and political communication: Building theory with unobtrusive Internet data. Invited panel presentation to be given at the International Communication Association Conference, Mass Communication Division. London, UK.

Weeks, B.E., Ksiazek, T.B., & Holbert, R.L. (2013). Partisan enclaves or diverse repertoires? A network approach to the political media environment. Paper to be presented at the International Communication Association Conference, Political Communication Division. London, UK.

Harvard Journalism project highlights recent work by Weeks and Holbert

Today the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard profiled Brian and Lance's recent Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly article, "Predicting dissemination of news content in social media: A focus on reception, friending, and partisanship".  Each month the Journalism Lab publishes a summary of what its editors consider to be the most interesting new research about digital media.  Glad to see this work getting some well deserved attention!

Abstract:
Social media are an emerging news source, but questions remain regarding how citizens engage news content in this environment. This study focuses on social media news reception and friending a journalist/news organization as predictors of social media news dissemination. Secondary analysis of 2010 Pew data (N = 1,264) reveals reception and friending to be positive predictors of dissemination, and a reception-by-friending interaction is also evident. Partisanship moderates these relationships such that reception is a stronger predictor of dissemination among partisans, while the friending-dissemination link is evident for nonpartisans only. These results provide novel insights into citizens’ social media news experiences.

Congrats to former COPS member Lindsay Hoffman

Former -- or actually, founding -- COPS graduate student member Lindsay Hoffman has just received promotion to Associate Professor and tenure in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. Lindsay was among the first students in our "new" graduate curriculum that was instituted in 2002, earning first her MA and then PhD here. Lindsay holds a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and is the Research Coordinator for Politics and Technology at the Center for Political Communication at UD. Lindsay also blogs for the Huffington Post and has published widely, including a recent paper building upon her dissertation work that was published in Communication Research. Congratulations Lindsay!

Post-doc opportunity

This post-doc will be housed in ASU's Sociology program, but applicants from other disciplines are welcome to apply.  If you're interested in youth political engagement, online protest, flash activism, etc., read on. Personally, I think this is a terrific opportunity for someone. I've known Jenn, the project director, for several years; she's great.  

Youth Activism Postdoctoral Fellowship

Job ID: 9300
Institution: University of Arizona
Department: School of Sociology
Title: Youth Activism Postdoctoral Fellowship
Position/Rank: Fellowships/Post-docs - Post-doctoral

The Youth Activism Project, housed in the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona, invites applications for a one-year, renewable postdoctoral fellowship on youth and participatory politics to begin in Fall 2013. The Youth Activism Project, directed by Dr. Jennifer Earl, is part of the MacArthur Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. It is focused on youth engagement in protest, particularly online protest and flash activism.

The postdoctoral fellow will be responsible for working with the PI to design and implement research studies related to overall project themes, including quantitative content coding of protest websites and analysis of this coding as well as interviews and focus groups with youth about online protest. Strong candidates will have research experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods, notable experience working in Stata or R, and be productive working in teams and independently. All candidates must have a Ph.D. in hand by the commencement of the fellowship and would preferably have received their Ph.D. within the past three years.

The School of Sociology at the University of Arizona is one of the best sociology programs in the country, consistently ranked among the top 20 Sociology programs in the United States for the past thirty years. It boasts a lively intellectual community and has played a pivotal role in the careers of many leading sociologists. Situated in the beautiful southwest in Tucson, the University of Arizona offers excellent benefits and Tucson offers a wonderful living experience. Competitive salary will be based on experience.

To apply, visit www.uacareertrack.com and apply for Job Number 52359. In addition to online forms, candidates must upload a letter of interest, c.v., (including the names of three references) and a research statement (see job ad for details).

The University of Arizona is an equal opportunity employer, committed to building a culturally diverse intellectual community, and strongly encourages applications from women and minority candidates. Review of applications will continue until the position is filled. Only complete applications will be considered.  

Forthcoming paper by COPS member

COPS member Jayeon "Janey" Lee and her fellow grad student Young-shin Lim just had a paper accepted at Mass Communication & Society.  Congratulations to both authors!

Lee, J. & Lim, Y. (in press). Who says what about whom? Young voters’ impression formation of political candidates on social-networking sites, Mass Communication & Society.

Great data resource for political communication - TESS (Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences)

TESS (Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences) is a great resource for faculty and graduate students to conduct experimental research with a generalizable population of adults for free. Yes, you read correctly, FOR FREE!

Funded by the National Science Foundation, you can submit brief five page proposals to conduct a study, they are peer-reviewed, and if approved, you can field the study at no cost to you. Great way to replicate experiments with adults, collect a larger data set of respondents with more heterogeneity of traits/individual differences, etc.

You can find more infomation about TESS at http://www.tessexperiments.org and how to submit proposals at http://www.tessexperiments.org./howtosubmit.html

In addition, TESS has a special competition for young investigators - i.e. graduate students - that is meant to allow graduate students to field large scale studies. You can find more information at http://www.tessexperiments.org/yic.html.

If you have a any questions about TESS, please feel free to email me as I am an Associate PI for the program and reviewer of proposals at nisbet.5@osu.edu.

Welcoming Robert Bond to OSU

As most of you know, the School of Communication recently hired Robert Bond, ABD at UC-San Diego, for our position in social network analysis. Robert will be joining us this coming fall. Robert is lead author of what must be one of the (if not THE) largest random assignment experiment on humans in history -- a study conducted in conjunction with Facebook in which feeds were experimentally manipulated on election day in 2010. The study was published this last fall in the journal Nature. Robert's research thus links not only to social networks more generally, but also to the work we do in COPS. I encourage you to welcome Robert to OSU @ rbond@ucsd.edu!

Congratulations to Alyssa Morey and Steve Kleinman! Both Alyssa and Steve defended their dissertations earlier this month, and both also now have completed their revisions. Within a few weeks they'll be sitting in Ohio Stadium, listening to President Obama (OSU's graduation speaker), and receiving their Ph.D.'s officially. After that, they're both off to assistant professor positions (Alyssa at the University at Albany [formerly known as SUNY-Albany] and Steve at Indiana University of Pennsylvania).

It's very hard work to earn a Ph.D., so they deserve our congratulations.

COPS alumnus in the news

COPS alumnus Jason Reineke is an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Middle Tennessee State University, and he is the Associate Director of MTSU Poll.  Jason recently received nice coverage on a local television news station for some gay-marriage polling conducted by MTSU.  Watch the interview here:

http://oo.gl/YxZNA

Congratulations, Jason!

Recent peer-reviewed publications by COPS members

I asked COPS members to share with me what they've published recently.  The results are impressive: there are more than a dozen manuscripts, including five that will appear in flagship outlets. Congratulations to everyone for the great work.  (If I've missed something of yours, please let me know!).

Eveland, W. P., Jr. (in press; anticipated publication Sept. 2013). Linking social network analysis to the spiral of silence, coorientation, and political discussion: The intersection of political perceptions and political communication. In W. Donsbach, C. Salmon, & Y. Tsfati (Eds.), The spiral of silence: New perspectives on communication and public opinion. Routledge.

Eveland, W. P., Jr., & Garrett, R. K. (in press; anticipated publication 2013). Communication modalities and political knowledge. In K. Kenski & K. H. Jamieson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political communication.

Eveland, W. P., Jr., & Hutchens, M. J. (in press). The role of conversation in developing accurate political perceptions: A multilevel social network approach. Human Communication Research. (accepted April 2013)

Eveland, W. P., Jr., Hutchens, M. J., & Morey, A. C. (in press). Political network size: Micro and macro implications. Political Communication. (accepted April 2012)

Garrett, R. K., Carnahan, D., & Lynch, E. K. (2013). A turn toward avoidance?  Selective exposure to online political information, 2004-2008. Political Behavior, 35(1), 113-134. doi: 10.1007/s11109-011-9185-6

Garrett, R. K., Nisbet, E. C., & Lynch, E. K. (in press). Undermining the corrective effects of media-based political fact checking? The role of contextual cues and naïve theory. Journal of Communication. (accepted December 2012)

Garrett, R.K., & Weeks, B.E. (2013). The promise and peril of real-time corrections to political misperceptions. Proceedings of the ACM 2013 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 1047-1058, New York: ACM.

Hayes, A. F., Matthes, J., & Eveland, W. P., Jr. (in press). Stimulating the quasi-statistical organ: Fear of social isolation motivates the quest for knowledge of the opinion climate. Communication Research. Available online 12/1/2011: DOI: 10.1177/0093650211428608.

Holbert, R.L., Weeks, B.E., & Esralew, S.E. (in press) Approaching the 2012 U.S. presidential election from a diversity of explanatory principles: Understanding, consistency, and hedonism. American Behavioral Scientist.

Knobloch-Westerwick, S. (2012). Selective exposure and reinforcement of attitudes and partisanship before a presidential election. Journal of Communication, 62, 628-642.

Knobloch-Westerwick, S. (in press). Selection, perception and processing of political messages. In C. Reinemann (Ed.), Political Communication (Vol. 18 of Handbook of Communication Sciences). Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin.

Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Johnson, B. K. (in press). Selective exposure for better or worse: Its mediating role for online news’ impact on political participation. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. (accepted May 2012).

Lee, J. (2013). “You know how tough I am?” Discourse analysis of U. S. Midwestern Congresswomen's self-presentation, Discourse &Communication, 7(3)

Liu, Y. I., Shen, F., Eveland, W. P., Jr., & Dylko, I. (in press). The impact of news use and news content characteristics on political knowledge and participation. Mass Communication and Society. (accepted February 2013).

Pingree, R. J., Quenette, A. M., Tchernev, J. M. & Dickinson, T. (2013), Effects of media criticism on gatekeeping trust and implications for agenda setting. Journal of Communication, 63(2), 351–372. doi: 10.1111/jcom.12016

Weeks, B.E., & Holbert, R.L. (in press). Predicting dissemination of news content in social media: A focus on reception, friending, and partisanship. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Westerwick, A., Kleinman, S. B., & Knobloch-Westerwick, S. (in press). Turn a blind eye if you care: Impacts of attitude consistency, importance, and credibility on seeking of political information and implications for attitudes. Journal of Communication.

[Note that this list was amended on 4/10/13 and 4/15 to reflect several articles that I missed the first time.]

New Library website

Graham Walden, the Communication Librarian, has created an OSU Library web page dedicated to survey research.  The page includes many of the resources that we discussed in COPS a couple years ago.  You can find it here:

http://library.osu.edu/find/subjects/survey-research/

Update on PolNet Conference

Scott McClurg

1:29pm Feb 8

DEADLINE FOR POLNET 13 HAS BEEN EXTENDED!

"Important Announcements Regarding the 6th Annual Political Networks Conference and Workshops, June 26-29 in Bloomington, IN:

**The application deadline has been extended to February 15!

**The NSF has recently renewed support for this conference and for generous graduate fellowships.

**The fellowship application deadline will be March 1; and the website will include an application feature very soon. Contact Bruce Desmarais (desmarais@polsci.umass.edu), Fellowship Committee Chair, for more information.

**The workshops will cover novice and advance network topics and will continue to be a highlight of the conference and a valuable training opportunity--at a bargain. Workshop details will be forthcoming on the website.

** Keynote speakers include Dr. Brint Milward and Dr. Robert Huckfeldt.

**Visit polnet2013.indiana.edu for more information. **Apply Today**"

Polnet conference at IU in June

Hi everyone,

Just got this message from Scott McClurg. I strongly endorse this conference if you're interested in networks. It's much like MAPOR, where you get close contact with the biggest names in the game. I went last year and thoroughly enjoyed it; I'm only not going this year due to travel conflicts...

As you may or may not know, this year's Political Network Conference is very close to SIU -- its in Bloomington, Indiana.  It should be relatively inexpensive and we will have scholarships for students (I'm trying to find more information on how to apply).  I know all of you have some interest in SNA and are using it in your dissertations (in some form).  I encourage you to apply for funding and attending.  The deadline is coming up soon, but this is a good way to have people see your research.  If you're just interested in more training, its good for that as well.  Details are here:

http://polnet2013.indiana.edu

Aaron, Alison, Darren, Chip, Jeff -- plz. forward to interested graduate students. Or, come yourselves!

Jayeon Lee and Lehigh University

Congratulations is to be offered as well to Jayeon "Janey" Lee who has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Journalism & Communication at Lehigh University.  Jayeon's dissertation is focusing on social media and the effects of journalists presenting varied personal and professional attributes in this environment.