Publishing of Political Communication Methods Sourcebook

"The Sourcebook for Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques" has been published by Routledge (2011 publication date). COPS member R. Lance Holbert is a co-editor for the volume. In addition, this work is littered with contributions from former and current COPS members. COPS-related chapter topics include survey panel designs (Eveland and Morey), current trends in survey research (Hoffman), secondary analysis (Holbert and Hmielowski), structural equation modeling (Holbert and LaMarre), mediation (Hayes and Myers), and general methods trends within the field (Kosicki).

COPS Publication: "E-Democracy writ small: The impact of the Internet on citizen access to local elected officials"

COPS member Kelly Garrett has a co-authored article in Information, Communication & Society that is now available online.  Below is the citation and abstract. 

Garrett, R. & Jensen, M. J. (2010). E-Democracy writ small: The impact of the Internet on citizen access to local elected officials. Information, Communication & Society

Abstract
This article examines how elected officials' interactions with neighborhood groups, business interests, issue groups, and other stakeholders are shaped by their use of the Internet and by characteristics of local e-government infrastructure. The study utilizes data from a nationwide survey of local elected officials and from an analysis of corresponding local government websites. Results show that Internet use is associated with a significant increase in contact with stakeholders and with increasingly diverse types of communication partners, even after controlling for officials' general propensity to communicate. Both time spent on official duties and city size moderate the influence of Internet use. However, local government web sites do not appear to have a substantive influence on citizen's participation in policy making.

Geidner heading to University of Tennessee

Please join me in congratulating Nick Geidner on accepting a tenure-track assistant professor position within the School of Journalism & Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. Nick has been a member of COPS since joining the OSU PhD program in 2007. Nick and his wife, Shelby, will be heading down to Knoxville this summer after Nick wraps up the last stages of his doctoral program. He will be missed within our School of Communication, but we are very pleased that he will begin the next stage of his career in a fine program. With this being stated, we hold some reservations about his becoming affiliated with the SEC, especially given Ohio State's recent track record in football when coming up against opponents from that conference. Nick, we hold out much hope that you will remain true to the scarlet & gray within the sea of orange you are about to become enveloped within. Congrats on accepting the UT position! It is a fitting end to what has been a most exciting year.

AAPOR Student Paper Competition Deadline

Seymour Sudman Student Paper Competition

2011 American Association for Public Opinion Research Annual Conference

Arizona Grand Resort

Phoenix, Arizona

May 12-15, 2011

http://www.aapor.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Sudman_Student_Paper_Competition_Information&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=2678

COPS Student Publications in November

Current and former student members of COPS have peer-reviewed publications that recently appeared in November. Current COPS doctoral candidate Ivan Dylko has an article appearing in the November issue of International Journal of Public Opinion Research entitled "An Examination of Methodological and Theoretical Problems Arising from the Use of Political Participation Indexes in Political Communication Research." Teresa Myers, a former student member of COPS who is now a post-doctoral researcher, has a co-authored article in the November issue of Political Communication entitled "Challenging the State: Transnational TV and Political Identity in the Middle East." Congrats to both!

COPS Profs at "Political Communication: The State of the Field in the 21st Century" Conference

COPS professors Andrew Hayes, Lance Holbert, and William "Chip" Eveland are attending the "Political Communication: The State of the Field in the 21st Century" three-day conference at the Annenberg Public Policy Center this week. This conference is designed to produce a subsequent handbook of political communication that will benefit not only from a large group of scholars working independently, but also by working together to make each individual contribution better through deliberation and feedback from the larger group.

Hayes is part of a group on "Interpersonal and Small Group Political Communication" and will be writing a subsequent chapter on the "Spiral of Silence." Holbert is part of a group on "Psychological Theories of Media Effects" and will be writing a subsequent chapter on "Uses and Gratifications." Eveland is part of the group on "Political Information Processing and Processing Models" and will be writing a subsequent chapter on "Communication Modalities and Political Knowledge." In total, approximately 60 scholars from communication, political science, psychology, and sociology are attending this event and contributing to the resulting book to be published by Oxford University Press.

Nisbet and Garrett Research Ripped From, and Contributes to, Headlines

The results of a survey just last month by COPS faculty Erik Nisbet and Kelly Garrett on rumors regarding the mosque near the site of the 9-11 attacks presents some timely and theoretically relevant input into a public opinion issue that has been widely covered in the news. Go here for the OSU press release, and here for a more detailed write-up.

Other News re: our Recent Graduates: Lindsay Hoffman

Last night on CNN U.S. Senate candidates Coons and O'Donnell (the latter in the national news spotlight in recent weeks) debated each other in an event hosted in part by the University of Delaware Center for Political Communication. Aside from being my BA/MA alma mater, I was happy to see this because my former PhD advisee, Lindsay Hoffman, is now a faculty member at the University of Delaware and is involved in the Center as Coordinator of Research in Politics and Technology. We're all very proud of what Lindsay has accomplished since leaving COPS, and I wanted to give her a shout out!

Terrific Blog Post

I have to share this terrific blog post from former COP (and current U of Wyoming Cowboy) Kristen Landreville. It's a great -- and honest -- portrait of what it's like going through a PhD program like ours. http://klandreville.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/whoot-whoot/

Congrats to Brian Weeks!

I just received my September issue of Mass Communication & Society and noticed that Brian Weeks is the first author of the lead manuscript. Congrats, Brian!

UPDATE: The OSU Research Communications Office put out a press release about Brian's study.

Ohio State's School of Communication #1 in Research Production and #3 Overall in Field

September 28, 2010 - The National Research Council (NRC) has released results of its extensive, five-year study of 83 doctoral programs in the field of communication. The reports reveals The Ohio State University' s School of Communication to be firmly situated among the elite communication programs in the country based on several metrics. The OSU School of Communication faculty achieved an absolute rank of #1 in research activity (e.g., average number of peer-reviewed publications per faculty member). In addition, the School as a whole achieved a #3 ranking in the field based on its achievements along twenty different criteria - these criteria reflected faculty research (e.g., % of faculty with grants), quality of graduate students (e.g., GRE scores), graduate student support (e.g., % of students with full financial support), and a broad range of diversity measures (e.g., % of female faculty, % of female students).

The extensive analyses conducted on the NRC data identified only five programs which could state with 90% certainty that they rank as one of the top 10 programs in the field. Joining OSU's School of Communication on this list are Stanford University's Department of Communication, the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Journalism & Mass Communication, and the Speech Communication program at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign (now the Department of Communication). This is truly elite company and the NRC rankings are a reflection of the significant advancements made by The Ohio State's School of Communication.

It is important to place the NRC rankings in some additional context. The 2010 NRC report is based on data collected only up through the 2005-2006 academic year. OSU's School of Communication has seen its level of research productivity grow exponentially since that time. A quick review of the broad range of works generated by the School 's faculty and graduate students and placed in the field's top peer-reviewed journal outlets offers much hope that the School of Communication is maintaining its steady progress toward becoming the single best place in the country to study communication.

Dr. Kelly Garrett Receives ASCoR Denis McQuail Award 2009

Our fellow COPS member Kelly Garrett was recently awarded the 2009 ASCoR Denis McQuail Award and was named a 2010-2011 ASCoR Honorary Fellow by the Amsterdam School of Communication Research. The award is based on the best research paper advancing communication theory to be published in an international journal in the previous year. An international jury selected Kelly's 2009 paper in the Journal of Communication entitled "Politically motivated reinforcement seeking: Reframing the selective exposure debate" for the award.

COPS at MAPOR 2010

The Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR) annual meeting and conference is held every year in Chicago. COPS always has a strong showing at this conference and many of our students have come away with honors and awards in the annual student research paper competition.

This year, COPS continues to be well represented at this conference with seven papers being presented by COPS members:

Eveland, W. P., Jr., & Kleinman, S. B. (2010, November). Differentiating the general and political discussion networks of bounded groups using social network analysis. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

Eveland, W. P., Jr., Morey, A. C., Tchernev, J., & Landreville, K. (2010, November). The who, what, when, where, how, and why of informal political conversations in the United States. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

Pingree, R. (2010, November). A novel method of correlation network visualization introduced and applied to mapping political space. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

Quenette, A. & Kleinman, S. (2010, November). Revisiting the knowledge gap hypothesis: The influence of media content on political knowledge gaps. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

Stoycheff, E. (November 2010). Let the People Speak: Citizens' Perceptions of a Free Press. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

Tchernev, J. M., Holbert, R. L., & Hill, M. (2010, November). Comparing Landline versus Cellular Phone Samples: Focusing on Audience, Political Media Use, and the Prediction of Political Media Use. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

Walther, W. O., Holbert, R. L., & Hmielowski, J. D. (2010, November). Studying how and why young viewers are turning to politicla TV satire: Assessment of a moderated-mediation model. Paper accepted at the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. Chicago, Il.

AEJMC 2010 Conference Report

COPS was well represented in Denver at the 2010 Association for Education in Mass Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention.  Below is a list of conference presentations COPS members.

• Beam, M. A. (2010). Modeling time in multilevel models. A paper to be presented at the the Communication Theory and Methodology Division at the Association for Education in Mass Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Convention. Denver, CO
• Geidner, N. W. (2010). Group involvement and the spiral of silence: Using agent-based modeling to understand opinion expression. Paper presented at the Communication Theory and Methods Division of the 2010 annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Denver, CO Top Student Paper!
• Hill, M. R. (2010). Fictional minds and symbolic interaction: How the act of communication facilitates understanding between characters. Paper presented at the Entertainment Studies Interest Group of the 2010 annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Denver, CO
• Hoplamazian, G. and S. Knobloch-Westerwick. (August, 2010). Social Self-Esteem Responses to Race Representation in Advertising: Downward Social Comparison and White Guilt. Paper presented at the Advertising Division of the 2010 annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Denver, CO
• Hoplamazian, G., & Holbert, R. L. (2010, August). Structural Equation Modeling and the Study of Advertising, 2004-2009. Paper to be presented at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication. Denver, CO.
• McCluskey, M. Kim, Y.M. (2010, August). Polarization or Moderaterism? Activist Group Ideology in Newspapers. Paper presented at the Newspaper Research Division of the 2010 annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Denver, CO
• Nisbet, E.C. and Meyers, T. (2010, August) Anti-Americanism as a media effect? Arab media, prior cognitions, and public opinion in the Middle East. Paper presented at the Communication Theory and Methods Division of the 2010 annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Denver, CO

 In addition, Myiah Hutchens won the Promising Professors competition in the Mass Communication and Society Division and gave a presentation on her teaching philosophy at the conference.

Lastly, several past and present COPS members were elected to leadership positions within AJEMC for the 2011 annual convention.  Former COPS member and OSU alumni Heather LaMarre was elected to be co-research chair of the Mass Communication and Society Division.  Jason Reneike, another former COPS member and alumnus, was elected research chair of the Communication Theory and Methods (CT&M) division. Myiah Hutchens, who recently graduated and is now at Texas Tech, was also elected as an officer-at-large to CT&M. Erik Nisbet, a current COPS member, was elected to be the co-research chair for the new Political Communication Research Group at AEJMC.

Myiah Hutchens Wins "Promising Professors" Competition

Please join me in congratulating COPS' own Myiah Hutchens for winning the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication's Mass Communication & Society division's "Promising Professors" competition. She will receive her Promising Professor award at this August's annual meeting. Myiah will take her new title with her as she begins her assistant professor position at Texas Tech in late August. Congrats Myiah!

Hmielowski to attend NCA Doctoral Honors Seminar

COPS member Jay Hmielowski will be one of 30 communication doctoral students from around the country who will be attending the 2010 NCA Doctoral Honors Seminar being held at the University of Utah on July 31-August 2. Jay's proposal, focusing on the role of intra-attitudinal ambivalence in public opinion formation and change, was accepted for presentation after a highly competitive review process. We are proud that Jay will be representing OSU and COPS at the gathering of some of the best young minds in the field. Well done, Jay!

Scholarship for the 2010 ICPSR Summer Program

A scholarship fund has been established in honor of Warren E. Miller for participation in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) 2010 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. The fund will provide financial support to outstanding pre-tenure scholars (assistant professors and advanced graduate students) in the social and behavioral sciences so they may attend one or two four-week sessions of the ICPSR Summer Program, held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Recipients of the Miller Scholarship will receive a fee waiver to cover Program enrollment and a stipend to help with expenses while staying in Ann Arbor.

Applicants to the Warren E. Miller Scholarship should have professional interests in one or more of the following areas of research (or in related fields):

Developing a common approach to understanding electoral behavior within or across nations

1. Understanding the process of democratization in electoral systems
2. Understanding the link between global politics and local electoral behavior
3. Understanding how context influences political behavior
4. Understanding how globalization causes change in political behavior

An application for the Warren E. Miller Scholarship should include:

1. A completed Summer Program application form, submitted through the online registration system on the Summer Program web site.
2. A vita
3. A cover letter from the applicant, explaining his or her scholarly interests, background, and future research plans.
4. Two letters of recommendation. For applicants who are faculty members, one of these letters should come from his or her Department Chair. For graduate student applicants, one of the letters should come from his or her faculty advisor.
5. An official transcript (for graduate student applicants only)

Application materials should be submitted electronically. The e-mail address for doing so is: sumprog@icpsr.umich.edu

Please be sure to put “MILLER SCHOLARSHIP AWARD” in the subject line of the message.

If necessary, hard-copy applications for the award also can be mailed to:

Miller Scholarship Award

ICPSR Summer Program

P.O. Box 1248

Ann Arbor, MI 48106

The deadline for applications is May 7, 2010.

Information about the 2010 ICPSR Summer Program, including the Program application form, is available on the ICPSR Summer Program webpage: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/sumprog/

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the Warren E. Miller Scholarship or the ICPSR Summer Program. E-mail: sumprog@icpsr.umich.edu

Political Communication-related Conference Calendar

Month	Paper Deadlines	Conferences
January
February	NCA/Polnet
March		ISA
April	AEJMC	MPSA
May		ICA (in US)
		AAPOR/WAPOR
June	MAPOR/ISA	Polnet/ICA (International)
July
August		AEJMC
September		APSA
October	MPSA
November	ICA	NCA
	AAPOR/WAPOR	MAPOR
December	APSA

NCA Papers Accepted

Several COPS graduate students recently received the good word that their papers have been accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the National Communication Association to be held in San Francisco (November). The COPS members include alumnus Heather LaMarre, now at the University of Minnesota, Kristen Landreville, who will soon be departing for a new position at the University of Wyoming, and current doctoral students Jay Hmielowski and Jayeon Lee. Congrats!

Garrett, R. K., Carnahan, D., & Lynch, E. A turn toward selectivity? Changes in Americans’ exposure to cross-cutting political outlets online. In Selective Exposure and Political Communication panel. Political Communication Division.

Landreville, K., D., Holbert, R. L., & LaMarre, H. L. The influence of late-night TV comedy viewing on political talk: A moderated-mediation model. Political Communication Division.

Hmielowski, J. D., Holbert, R. L., & Lee, J. Predicting the consumption of political TV satire: Affinity for political humor, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. Political Communication Division.

Fishkin at Mershon

Wednesday April 14^th from 12:00-1:30 at the Mershon Center (1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201)

“Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation”

There is no paper for the talk.

Prof. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University. He is also professor of political science and communication, director of Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy, and chair of the Department of Communication. Fishkin is author of a number of books including Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform (Yale University Press, 1991), The Dialogue of Justice (Yale University Press, 1992 ), and The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy (Yale University Press, 1995). He is co-author with Bruce Ackerman of Deliberation Day (Yale University Press, 2004), and his most recent book When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Fishkin is best known for developing Deliberative Polling and has conducted them in the United States, Britain, Australia, Denmark, Bulgaria, China, Greece and other countries.

To sign up for this event, please contact Beth Russell at russell.16@osu.eduby Monday, April 12, 2010.

Myiah Hutchens Accepts Faculty Position at Texas Tech

Congratulations to COPS member Myiah Hutchens, who just yesterday decided to accept an assistant professor position at Texas Tech University! This is a terrific position at a doctoral-granting institution that has really been "on-the-move" in recent years and making very solid hires. Way to go Myiah!

Latest Issue of Journal of Communication

The OSU School of Communication is well represented in the March 2010 issue of Journal of Communication. First, Lance Holbert, Kelly Garrett, and doctoral student Laurel Gleason published "A New Era of Minimal Effects? A Response to Bennett and Iyengar." Later in the issue School of Communication Director Carroll Glynn and former COPS member (and Andrew Hayes M.A. advisee) Mike Huge published "Hostile Media and the Campaign Trail: Perceived Media Bias in the Race for Governor." Congrats!

Course on Habermas in Poli Sci by Neblo

Mike Neblo from Political Science has asked that I convey some information about his Spring 2010 graduate course (T/Th 3:30-6:18) on Habermas:

After several years here, I am finally getting to teach a course on Habermas (PS766), and wanted to reach out to any interested grad students in communications. I have not finalized the syllabus, but it is worth noting that I intend the course as an overview of his whole system of thought, not just his political philosophy. So we will be spending some time on his epistemology, theory of modernity and communication, and discourse ethics, before finishing up with his political thought and applications. If you think that this would be a good fit for any of your students, I would be eager to have them!

NSF awards $10 million for American National Election Studies

The American National Election Studies (ANES) is one of the most important tools for political communication research in the United States.  The project has collected data on voting, political behavior, and public opinion in every presidential election since 1948, as well as most midterm elections.  The NSF just awarded $10 million to the project for the 2010 midterm and 2012 presidential elections which will allow the project to futher expand its data collection capabilities. This is great news for political communication researchers!

TODAY: Talk by democratic theorist Mark Warren

Democratic theorist Mark Warren is giving a talk at 2:30 this afternoon (2/19) titled "Two trust-based uses of minipublics in democratic systems". The talk is sponsored by the Department of Political Science and will be held in Derby 2030. More information about Professor Warren is available here: http://www.politics.ubc.ca/index.php?id=2516 and a paper on the same subject is here: http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/intranet/poltheory/papers-2010/warren-Dec-2009.pdf

COPS ICA Achievements

COPS members obtained a 100% acceptance rate for papers submitted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA) to be held this June in Singapore. The acceptance rate for the conference as a whole was substantially lower, 54%. Congrats to all COPS authors! Outstanding work! COPS members Holbert, Garrett, Geidner, and Hill will be attending the conference, and it appears that they will be quite busy during their time abroad.

Here is the list of accepted works (alphabetical order):

Garrett, R. K. (2010). The troubling consequences of online election rumoring. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Geidner, N. W. (2010). Perceived network connection: Measuring individual-level connection to voluntary groups. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Holbert, R. L. & Geidner, N. W. (2010). A theory of political campaign media connectedness (PCMC), part II: Clarifying the roles of debate viewing and online media. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Holbert, R. L., & Hill, M. R. (2010). The promotion of the American cable TV news personality and its influences. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Kline, S., & Hill, M. R. "Editorial Inkblots: A Comparative Analysis of Presidential Election Cartoons from 1960, 1980, and 2008." Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Matthes, J., Hayes, A. F., Rojas, H., Shen, F., Min, S. J., & Dylko, I. (2010). Testing the spiral of silence theory in nine countries: An individual difference perspective. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Slater, M. D., & Gleason, L. S. (2010). Theory Development Strategies in Communication Science. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

Sohn, D. & Geidner, N. W. (2010). Collective dynamics of the spiral of silence: The role of quasi-statistical monitoring. Paper accepted for presentation at the upcoming annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Singapore.

COPS Alum Lindsay Hoffman Making Her Mark at University of Delaware

OSU COPS alumnus Lindsay Hoffman was recently named the Coordinator of Research in Politics and Technology for the new Center for Political Communication just established at UD (www.udel.edu/cpc). She will be coordinating research funding for faculty and students, as well as organizing scholarly and public presentations of research associated with the Center. Moreover, Dr. Hoffman is co-P.I. on a $50,000 grant from the University of Delaware Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center for a project titled: “Political Communication and Engagement in the 21st Century.” http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2010/dec/ihrc121409.html

COPS Winter 2010 Schedule of Events

1-8 Teresa Myers Job Talk

1-22 Erik Nisbet, “Anti-Americanism as Media Effect? Media selection, exposure and public opinion about the United States in the Middle East”

2-5 Ivan Dylko, “Explicating Political User-Generated Content and Theorizing About Its Effects on Democracy Using Mix-of-Attributes Approach”

2-19 Discussion of series of Journal of Communication works on the future of political communication effects research:

• Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of Communication, 58, 707-731.
• Holbert, R. L., Garrett, R. K., & Gleason, L. S. (2010). A new era of minimal effects? A response to Bennett and Iyengar. Journal of Communication, 60, 15-34.
• Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2010).The shifting foundations of political communication: Responding to a defense of the media effects paradigm. Journal of Communication, 60, XX-XX.

3-5 Jay Hmielowski, “Developing a Measure of Affinity for Political Humor” and Megan Hill, “Striking Similarities: Making the Match between Cable TV News Personalities and Interpersonal Communication Style”

3-12 Visitation Day for Prospective Graduate Students for Incoming 2010-2011 class

Recent COPS Alumnus Heather LaMarre Inaugural AEJMC Scholar

Congratulations to Heather LaMarre (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota; PhD, OSU, 2009) for being among the inaugural recipients of the AEJMC Scholars Program. LaMarre's project, "Citizen Journalism and Social Media in the 2010 Election: A Multi-Method Approach to Understanding Emerging Trends and Innovations in Mass Communication Campaigns" has been funded with $2500 through the program.