Announcements

See the calendar on the right for the full schedule.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

COPS in the News

February has been a big month for public engagement by members of COPS. First, Olga Kamenchuk co-authored a piece in the Washington Post reporting on survey data on American attitudes toward Vladimir Putin:





Just two days later, Jacob Long's piece on possible differential response to public opinion polls regarding Trump appeared in the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/06/has-trumps-approval-rating-really-shot-up-49-percent-probably-not/


Friday, February 14, 2020

COPS next Tuesday -- 2pm (not our usual 1pm)

Tuesday (Feb. 25) Erin Drouin will be talking about her research and seeking our feedback. Please come, but do note we'll be meeting one hour later than normal for this meeting.


Title: Competency Stereotypes, Female Political Candidates, and Political Knowledge: Insights from Verbal Descriptions and Eye Movements 

An an important stereotype that people may use when evaluating political candidates is gender-based issue competency. Voters may evaluate males as more competent at economic and military issues, while women are evaluated as more competent at 'compassion issues' such as education and healthcare. However, current work has found mixed results with some studies finding that voters use issue-competency stereotypes while other studies find no such relationship. We suggest that people's level of political knowledge is an important moderator that may explain the discrepancy in findings. Furthermore, we use non-self report measures of stereotyping -- verbal descriptions of candidates and eye movements  -- to circumvent social desirability biases which could underestimate the use of gender-based stereotyping.

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Dr. Lindsay Hoffman Special Guest Speaker at COPS, 2/4/2020

Next week Dr. Lindsay Hoffman will speak to the COPS group about her career trajectory as a political communication scholar. Dr. Hoffman is Associate Professor of Communication and Associate Director of the Center for Political Communication (CPC) at the University of Delaware. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from The Ohio State University in 2007 after completing her M.A., both under the advisement of Dr. Chip Eveland. Dr. Hoffman was one of the founding student members of COPS and presented regularly in preparation for conferences and job talks. One paper that worked its way through COPS is now one of her most highly cited papers (Hoffman & Thomson, 2009). Broadly, Dr. Hoffman's research examines how various forms of media and technology foster or suppress political behavior and communication. She is also Director of the CPC's National Agenda Series, where she talks with politicians like Joe Biden (a UD alum) and John Kasich, journalists like NPR's Domenico Montanaro (a UD alum), comedians like Chris Garcia and Ashley Nicole Black ("Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"), political cartoonists, and interesting public figures across the ideological spectrum.