Madyson Burgess Joins OSU

I'm happy to report that yesterday I received word that Madyson Burgess, an honors undergraduate here at OSU, has accepted our admission offer and will be staying here for our MA program come the fall. Madyson has interests in survey research methods, political communication, and communication technologies. Welcome Madyson!

Welcoming Megan Hill to COPS

I spoke with Megan Hill Saturday morning and I'm very happy to let everyone know that she has told me she'll be joining us in the Ph.D. prorgram at OSU (and in COPS) in the fall. Please welcome her -- she can be reached at meghill2@gmail.com

Tchernev chooses OSU

I am happy to be able to report the addition of another future COPS member. After receiving several graduate school admissions offers, John Tchernev has chosen OSU for his Ph.D. study. John comes to us from Northwestern University, where he completed his B.A. A few years out of college, John returns to academics after spending time in LA as a freelance writer. Please join me in welcoming John.

New Course from Law School

Normally, students in the Graduate School are unable to take courses offered by the Law School. However, a special arrangement has been made so that grad students can take a course being offered by law professor and prominent e-Democracy scholar Peter Shane next winter (2009) quarter. The course will emphasize the role of the Internet in democracy. You can learn more about Peter Shane here, and do get in touch with him if you think you'll want to take his course. Keep this in mind if you have an interest in this topic...

Political Theory Talk

The Political Theory Workshop is pleased to announce a talk by Simone Chambers of the University of Toronto who will be speaking on:

"Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass Democracy?"

Professor Chambers is a distinguished scholar of political theory and
public law. She has held various positions at Harvard, Colorado,
Princeton, and the University of Munich. She has made foundational
contributions to the study of deliberative democratic theory, democracy
and the media, and theories of civil society. More recently, Prof.
Chambers has been interested in the role of religion in public
discourse, as well as practical tensions arising within deliberative
democracy's institutional manifestations.

Please join us on Friday, April 11 at 3:30pm in Derby 2130 for what promises to be a very interesting talk, with a reception to follow.

New COPS Members

I'm happy to announce the first wave of new COPS members for next year. We have learned that Ja-Yeon ("Janey") Lee (lee.jayeon@gmail.com), who is currently completing her MA degree at the University of Texas-Austin, will be joining our PhD program in the fall. She is interested in political communication and new technologies. Jim Collier (wrcpem@columbus.rr.com), currently earning his BA here at OSU, will be joining the MA program, with interests in political communication. I know of several more students who we will be hearing from in just a matter of days, and I'll post more as a learn more. Meanwhile, please join me in welcoming Ja-Yeon and Jim to OSU and COPS!

Interesting Link for Blog Research

Our members interested in the use of online technologies to learn about and discuss politics might be interested in this research by Microsoft (gasp!) tracking news links on blogs and the nature of the discussion of these news links by blog ideological focus. Follow the link to learn about it...

http://research.microsoft.com/projects/blews/blews.aspx

AEJMC MCS division research award call

The Mass Communication and Society division of AEJMC has recently posted a call for its annual research award. Proposals are due by May 1st. The winner is obligated to give the division's journal, Mass Communication and Society, first right of refusal for publication of research stemming from the award. COPS members may recall that Teresa Myers and I won this award last year. The research stemming from that proposal is currently going through peer review. Here is the call for proposals.

COPS and OSU Welcome Ray Pingree and Kimberly Rios Morrison

I am happy to announce that, starting AU 2008, Kimberly Rios Morrison and Ray Pingree will be joining the School of Communication faculty as well as the COPS group.

Kim comes to us from Stanford, where she is completing her Ph.D. in the business school. Her research focuses on minority group influence and the conditions that prompt minority opinion expression in group settings. She also studies social identity, perceived threat from outgroups, and attitude change. Her training in organizational behavior and experimental social psychology will further enrichen an already exciting research culture. Here are a couple of her recent papers that might interest COPS members:

Morrison, K. R., & Miller, D. T. (in press). Distinguishing between silent and vocal minorities: Not all deviants feel marginal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology [PDF]

Morrison, K. R., & Ybarra, O. (2008). The effects of realistic threat and group identification on social dominance orientation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 156-163.


Ray is completing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin and brings an interesting background as a computer scientist to his own theorizing about political deliberation. Some of his published work has attempted to identify ways to improve political deliberation through the use of online technologies. He has two recent publications in Communication Theory that you might be interested in:

Pingree, R. J. (2007). How messages affect their senders: A more general model of message effects and implications for deliberation. Communication Theory. 17, 439-461.

Pingree, R. J. (2006). Decision structure and the problem of scale deliberation. Communication Theory, 16: 198-222.

Please join me in welcoming Ray and Kim to COPS!

Reineke to join faculty at MTSU

I am excited to announce that after receiving two attractive job offers, Jason Reineke has accepted an Assistant Professorship at Middle Tennessee State University's College of Mass Communication, School of Journalism. In addition to his regular faculty duties, Jason will be the new Associate Director of the MTSU poll, a survey of Tennessee residents administered by the Office of Communication Research that has been conducted twice yearly since 1998. The poll regularly surveys the public on topics including free expression, faith in major institutions, and a wide range of other public issues. Among the courses Jason will regularly teach include a course entitled "Free Expression, Mass Media, and the American Public", an examination of freedom of expression from legal, social scientific, and ethical perspectives. I know I speak for all COPS members when I say how proud we are of Jason for his hard work and dedication during his years at OSU, and we will miss seeing him around the halls of Derby.

COPS in New Orleans for AAPOR

And, to build on the ICA information, I do know that COPS will have a presence at the American Association for Public Opinion Research conference in New Orleans a week or so before ICA. Although there are likely more COPS papers, I know that Laurel Gleason will be presenting her paper "Revisiting 'The Voice of the People': An Evaluation of the Claims and Consequences of Deliberative Polling" and Jerry Kosicki will present "Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism 2001-2007." And, I have to admit, I suspect that New Orleans will be more appealing in May than Canada... ;-)

COPS in Montreal for ICA

Decisions have been rendered on submissions to the annual conference of the International Communication Association held in Montreal this May. As always, research in political communication and public opinion by COPS will be well represented on the international research stage. Here is a partial list of papers COPS members will be presenting.

Beam, M. A.
The portal effect: The impact of customized content on news exposure.

Hayes, A. F., Glynn, C. J., & Huge, M. A.
Cautions in the interpretation of coefficients and hypothesis tests in linear models with interactions.

Hayes, A. F., & Myers, T. M.
Testing the "proximate casualties hypothesis": Local troop loss, attention to news and support for military intervention.

Hively, M. H. & Landreville, K. D.
The interaction between efficacy and emotion in predicting civic engagement.

Holbert, R. L., & Benoit, W. L.
A Theory of political campaign media connectedness.

Holbert, R. L., & Hansen, G. J.
Stepping beyond message specificity in the study of affect as mediator and inter-affective associations: Fahrenheit 9/11, candidate aversion, and perceptions of debate superiority.

Lamarre, H., & Knobloch-Westerwick, S.
Dark black rap and bright white rock: Effects of radical music on support of ethnic groups.

Landreville, K., & LaMarre, H.
Documentary and historical reenactment film: A comparison of transportation, emotion, interest, and learning.

Kim, Y.M., & Geidner, N. W.
Politics as friendship: The impact of online social networks on young voters' political behavior.

Min, S. J., & Feaster, J.
Missing children in news: Racial and gender representation of missing children cases in television news.

Shen, F., Lu, Y., Guo, Z. & Zhou, B.
News media use, perception, and efficacy: A multi-level analysis of media participation in China.

COPS Faculty in Public Opinion Research Handbook

The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research has now hit the market, and might be of some interest to students in the COPS group. The handbook includes chapters from three different OSU faculty -- Theories on the Perception of Social Reality by COPS members Eveland and Glynn and The Methodological Strengths and Weaknesses of Survey Research by political science professor Herb Weisberg.

Congrats to S.J. for his Publication!

Our own S.J. Min is the sole-author of a recent publication in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication entitled Online vs. Face-to-Face Deliberation: Effects on Civic Engagement. The paper, based on an experiment S.J. conducted here at OSU, concludes that both online and FTF deliberation about politics can increase knowledge, efficacy, and willingness to participate in politics.

Academic year off to a great start for COPS

First, congratulations to Myiah Hively for her sole-authored top-two paper at MAPOR, which continues the group's five year streak of wins at this public opinion conference. Graduate students Michael Beam, Nick Geidner, Laurel Gleason, Jay Hmielowski, Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville, Teresa Myers, and Chris Shen were all authors on MAPOR papers as well. Faculty members Chip Eveland, Lance Holbert, Young Mie Kim, and Mike McCluskey also had papers at MAPOR, as did COPS alumni Tiffany Thomson and Lindsay Hoffman. Way to make an impact at the group's main autumn conference everyone!

We also had some great student research presentations to the group this quarter by Jay Hmielowski; Myiah Hively & Kristen Landreville; Micheal Beam, Kristen Landreville, & Heather LaMarre; and Teresa Myers.

Opportunities for future research abound, as we heard in October from faculty members Lance Holbert, Kelly Garrett, Mike McCluskey, Chip Eveland and Andy Hayes about the many data sets available exclusively to COPS students and faculty for analysis.

Last but certainly not least, COPS was instrumental in attracting soon-to-be Cornell Ph. D. Erik Nisbet to join the School's faculty as an assistant professor in strategic communication starting Autumn 2008. Welcome Erik!

The group has a lot to be proud of already, and we're just getting started -- great work everyone!