Colbert Study reported on by Huffington Post, Keith Olbermann

COPS members,

Check it out - the LaMarre, Landreville, and Beam IJPP study on The Colbert Report is being reported on by The Huffington Post (link offered below). In addition, Keith Olbermann referenced the article on his MSNBC program, Countdown (link offered below as well). Way to go Heather, Kristen, and Michael! Very exciting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/27/colbert-study-conservativ_n_191899.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbCvipi171s

Also see our own Heather LaMarre appearing on MSNBC for an interview with Keith Olbermann:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/30527340#30527340

COPS Students - IJPP Publication

OSU COPS graduate students (Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville, and Michael Beam) had their work, "The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report," published in the International Journal of Press/Politics. Congrats!

Reference:

LaMarre, H. L., Landreville, K. D., & Beam, M. A. (2009). The irony of satire: Political ideology and the motivation to see what you want to see in The Colbert Report. International Journal of Press/Politics, 14, 212-231.

Recent COPS Graduates Publish Lead Article in JOBEM

Recent OSU Ph.D. graduates and COPS members Lindsay Hoffman and Tiffany Thomson have the lead article in the current issue of Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Their article, based on data gathered as part of the Kids Voting Central Ohio research project, is titled "The Effect of Television Viewing on Adolescents' Civic Participation: Political Efficacy as a Mediating Mechanism."

Shen Gets Sole-Authored Comm Theory publication, job offer

Congratulations to Fei "Chris" Shen, who in the past week or so has received both an academic job offer and a sole-authored manuscript (based on the theory section of his dissertation) accepted for publication in Communication Theory ("An economic theory of political communication effects: How the economy conditions political learning"). Chris has accepted a job offer as assistant profesor at the City University of Hong Kong. Tell Chris "congrats" when you see him lurking the halls...

OSU COPS in Communication Research and Political Communication

The new issue of Communication Research is out, and in it 4 of the 6 articles are authored or co-authored by School of Communication faculty. Two of those four articles are particularly relevant to COPS and were written by COPS members. Lance, Heather, and Kristen co-authored the first, "Fanning the flames of a Partisan Divide: Debate Viewing, Vote Choice, and Perceptions of Vote Count Accuracy." The other is by Young Mie: "Issue Publics in the New Information Environment: Selectivity, Domain Specificity, and Extremity."

Meanwhile, over in the current issue of Political Communication -- a special issue on communication and political socialization -- we have two articles by COPS members. First, Myiah and I authored "Contextual Antecedents and Political Consequences of Adolescent Political Discussion, Discussion Elaboration, and Network Diversity." And, Carroll Glynn, Mike Huge, and Carole Lunney authored "The Influence of Perceived Social Norms on College Students' Intention to Vote."

Congrats to all the COPS members keeping our journals full of interesting and high quality research!

OSU School of Communication Ranks Highly in Current CIOS Study

I thought I'd share the current rankings through the quantitative CIOS study for areas relevant to the COPS group. We rank in the Top Five in the following research areas, based on this study using data on journal publications: Political Elections, News, Newspapers, Technology, Methodology, Theory, and Public Opinion. In fact, we're ranked #1 for Broadcasting & Media. Way to go COPS members for publishing your work and putting us up so high in the rankings! If you're interested in seeing the sorts of publications that led to this ranking, just view our list of COPS member publications.

Myers, Hayes, win separate ICA paper awards

COPS Ph.D. student Teresa Myers has again won a top student paper prize, this time in the Political Communication division of the International Communication Association 2009. Her paper is titled "Communication and Foreign Policy Opinions: Attention to News, Policy Framing, and Willingness to Engage." At about the same time, I learned that a paper I submitted to the Information Systems division of ICA 2009 with Joerg Matthes of the University of Zurich, "A Primer for Communication Researchers on Probing Interactions in Linear Models, with SPSS and SAS Implementations" placed in the top 4 of that division as well.

LaMarre Accepts University of Minnesota Position

Heather LaMarre, OSU School of Communication doctoral candidate and long-time COPS member, has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. The position will begin on August 1, 2009 and Heather will be missed when she and her family make their way to the Twin Cities. However, there is much friendship and scholarship to share between now and then. Congrats, Heather!

Myers wins second MAPOR award

Congratulations to Teresa Myers for winning in the MAPOR Fellows student paper competition for her paper titled "Public Opinion About Public Opinion: An Examination of the Use of Public Opinion Polls as a Normative Political Communication Tool Between the Public and Representatives." This makes the second time Teresa has received a MAPOR student paper award and six consecutive years that an OSU COPS graduate student has placed in the top three in this competition. Good work Teresa!

Two Forthcoming Papers By Garrett Address Political Selectivity

I thought you would like to know of two forthcoming papers by our own Kelly Garrett that address the issue of selectivity in political media consumption. Congrats, Kelly!

Garrett, R. K. (Forthcoming). Politically motivated reinforcement seeking: Reframing the selective exposure debate Journal of Communication.

Garrett, R. K. (Forthcoming). Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

The "Facebook Effect" and African-American Enthusiasm in 2008 Election

The OSU Lantern has a couple more articles out today on the results from the CBS News/UWIRE 2008 Youth Election poll. One article focuses on trends in Internet and media use among college voters while the other examines the level of election enthusiasm and participation among African-American students. Unfortunately, the online editions of the articles are missing all the cool graphics and charts with all the data comparisons - you have to read the print edition to see those.

CBS/UWIRE Election Poll Results

CBS News/UWIRE released the results of the their 2008 Election Youth Poll on political preferences, engagement, and mobilization among college youth yesterday (see previous posts on this project here and here).

The results for the OSU campus may be read in the Lantern. Overall, OSU Columbus students favored Obama over McCain 63 to 33%. UWIRE has a write-up on the overall results. The detailed topline results by state and the full questionnaire is available from CBS News.

Moving forward, COPS members will be analyzing these results, and a planned post-election panel survey to OSU and Cornell respondents, for academic publication.

Princeton Panel on Accuracy and Methodology of State Polling in 2008 Election

On October 7th Princeton University held a panel on the accuracy and methodology of state polls in the election, composed of several notable methodologists and statisticians. The YouTube broadcast of the symposium is online and very engrossing.

Here is a brief description: Panelists- Christopher Achen, Professor of Social Sciences and Associate Chair of the Department of Politics at Princeton University; Andrew Gelman, professor in the Departments of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia University and director of the University`s Applied Statistics Center; and Larry Hugick, Chairman of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Moderator: Alan Krueger, the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School and Director of the Survey Research Center at Princeton. (Oct 7, 2008 at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Co-sponsored by the Survey Research Center, the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, and the New York and New Jersey chapters of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.)

Early Voting Data at United States Election Project

A great resource for secondary data on voting and elections is Dr. Michael McDonald's United States Election Project website at George Mason University. It includes data on turnout trends, voter registration trends, early voting, etc.

A recent post provides data on early voting in all 50 states for the 2008 election and in some cases provides the demographic and party breakdowns for early voters. A great resource for political junkies.

CBS News Poll Closes

Last night at midnight, the CBS News 08 Youth Election Poll closed (see previous post on this project). Over 143,000 students were contacted in 47 schools across four states. The overall response rate was 18% for a total of 25,797 completed surveys. OSU was included in the sample, with 499 completed surveys and a response rate of 16.6%.

The full survey results will be released by CBS News, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the OSU Lantern (with a focus on OSU results compared to the rest of the schools) on October 27th. After the election a COPS team will be delving into the full survey results for academic analysis and publication. We will keep you posted on the findings.