Garrett & Bond receive award to analyze Facebook data

A research team that includes two School of Communication faculty is one of 12 inaugural recipients of the Social Media and Democracy Research grants from the Social Science Research Council and their partner Social Science One. Garrett will lead the team, which also includes Rob Bond, Ceren Budak (University of Michigan), Jason Jones (Stony Brook University), and Drew Margolin (Cornell University).

The award provides unprecedented access to anonymous data from Facebook on the sharing of online content. These data will be used to examine a variety of behaviors that could be harm people's understanding of science, politics and their community, notably including sharing inaccurate information.

A brief description of the project is here: https://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/view/social-media-and-democracy-research-grants/grantees/garrett/

Other grantees are listed here: https://items.ssrc.org/social-media-and-democracy-research-grants-grantees/

And more details about the types of data to be analyzed are here: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/04/election-research-grants/

News for those interested in Agent-Based Modeling (relevant to matters included but not limited to social network analysis):

Dear All,

Virginia Nivar is offering a new course - Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling Using NetLogo - this Autumn 2012 (https://complexity.osu.edu/news/agent-based-modeling-course-offered-autumn). This course is recommended for undergraduates and graduate students interested in modeling complex systems. You can can register now!

Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling Using NetLogo
Integrated Biomedical Science (IBGP) 5194-0010
Instructor: Virginia A. Nivar
virginia.nivar@osumc.edu
Syllabus:  Autumn, 2012
Tuesdays and Thursday, 7:05-8:25PM
285 Baker Systems Engineering

Best,

Mark

Dr. Mark Moritz

Assistant Professor

Department of Anthropology
The Ohio State University

House Republicans Pass Bill to Defund Political Science Research at the National Science Foundation

House Republicans passed a bill to specifically (and only) defund the political science grant program at the National Science Foundation. Political communication scholars in all fields should be concerned about this development, as this act severely hampers funding for key research resources such as the American National Election Studies, the General Social Survey, and many other sources of political communication data.

See the post at the Monkey Cage for more information

Joint meeting with the Interpersonal Communication Research Group

Please join us this Friday for a joint meeting between COPS and the newly formed Interpersonal Communication Research Group. Chip Eveland will be speaking about his current work in a talk titled, Moving Beyond Standard Practice in the Study of Informal Political.

More about the Interpersonal Communication Research Group:

A new group has been formed based on the growing number of faculty and graduate students with research interests in interpersonal communication. The goal of the group is to provide a relaxed opportunity to discuss recent developments in Interpersonal Communication theory and research as well as research in progress. Faculty and students are also invited to check out our new blog at www.ipcosu.blogspot.com. If you would like to be added as a contributor to the blog, please contact Chip Eveland with your gmail address. We plan to have periodic meetings—day, time, and topics will be announced.

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.

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!

NSF funding for Political Science

Sen. Coburn (R-OK) has proposed an amendment to eliminate NSF’s political science program. Although the American Political Science Association (APSA) has not issued a formal statement on the issue at this time, the organization has created a page were you can learn more about the proposal: http://www.apsanet.org/content_67297.cfm. For his part, Sen. Coburn has released several documents explaining his motivation for drafting the measure, one of which can be found here: http://bit.ly/2osqCR.