Congratulations to COPS Alum Fei "Chris" Shen

After defending his dissertation proposal about this time last year, Chris Shen submitted a revised theory paper based upon it to Communication Theory. After some revisions, the manuscript was accepted and is now published. Congratulations, Chris! The manuscript is:

Shen, F. (2009). An economic theory of political communication effects: How the economy conditions political learning. Communication Theory, 19(4).

Mershon Center grants

The Mershon Center for International Security Studies is currently accepting applications for grants for faculty and student research pertinent to international security. For details, see http://mershoncenter.osu.edu/grants/grants/grants.htm

COPS Scholars In the News: Andrew Hayes and Teresa Myers

COPS members Andrew Hayes and Teresa Myers have two forthcoming papers examining the "casualty hypothesis" and support for war in Iraq, one in Mass Communication and Society and the other in International Journal of Public Opinion Research. OSU has put out a press release/announcement (see below) about their interesting and timely research.

Deaths to local soldiers matter in shaping war opinion
Americans think locally when they consider whether the loss of U.S. troops overseas warrants troop withdrawals, suggests a new nationwide study, co-authored by Andrew Hayes, associate professor of communication and Teresa Myers, a graduate student in communication at Ohio State. Researchers found that people were more likely to support withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq if one or more soldiers from their home state were killed there within the past two to three weeks, regardless of how many soldiers from other parts of the country had been killed recently. Read more: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/casualties.htm. They were recently interviewed by WOSU about this research. You can listen to the WOSU news report and interview online.

Cameo on The Colbert Report for Heather LaMarre

The Colbert Report played a quick MSNBC clip of Heather LaMarre (recent OSU PhD grad and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota) describing a study about ambiguous message processing and satire.

Michael Beam and I co-authored the study with her, which earned Heather an interview with Keith Olbermann on May 1, 2009 (the interview that the Colbert Report is using in this clip).

The clip is comparing Glenn Beck to Stephen Colbert and their sincerity of opinion. Heather's cameo is about 3:30 minutes into the clip. Congrats to Heather for making the Colbert Report!

Link: http://tinyurl.com/ygkhfjo

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.

COPS email list

If you'd like to receive COPS emails, including copies of blog posts, you can now subscribe to the COPS email list. To subscribe, send an email as follows:

To: listserver@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: [anything]
Message text: "subscribe osucops Firstname Lastname"

The quotes around the text aren't required, and the name that you type in the message text will be used to identify you to other list members.

Communication Idol

Apparently three COPS faculty are viewed by the graduate students in an odd, pop-culture manner. Hayes, Holbert and Eveland are seen as three American (or Communication) Idol judges when evaluating and commenting on student presentations in the meetings. Hayes is Simon, Holbert is Paula, and Eveland is Randy. Thanks to Greg Hoplamazian for his excellent Photoshop skills in constructing this group photo of us... :-)

Myiah Hively Takes Not One, but TWO Top Student Paper Awards at AEJMC

I'm thrilled to share with you that Myiah Hively has won not only the top student paper award in the Mass Communication & Society division for this year's AEJMC conference, but also the top student paper award (i.e., Chaffee-McLeod Award) in the Communication Theory & Methodology division. Terrific work Myiah!

This, combined with the Dylko et al. paper winning a top-3 paper award in the communication technology (CTEC) division and Nori Comello winning a top-3 paper in the CT&M division (giving us 2 of the 3 student paper awards in CT&M this year), means OSU is taking a large bulk of the student paper awards from the relevant divisions this year.

I should also note that this is the third year in a row that a COPS student has won the top paper award in the MC&S division; Chris Shen won the top student paper award in that division two years ago, then a top-3 paper award in the division last year. Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville, and Michael Beam won the top student paper in that division last year, so we had 2 out of the three winners in MC&S last year just as we have 2 of the top three papers in CT&M this year.

So, congratulations to Myiah and all the others who worked hard and produced some terrific papers! We are all very proud of you.

Oh, and by the way, Myiah, Ivan, and Nori will all be on the academic job market this year, so their paper awards are well timed!

Grad Students Earn AEJMC Top 3 Student Paper Award

Four COPS graduate students, Ivan Dylko, Kristen Landreville, Michael Beam, and Nick Geidner, were notified recently that they received a Top 3 Student Paper Award from the Communication Technology Division (CTEC) of the AEJMC. The award-winning paper is entitled, "Gatekeeping and YouTube: News Filters and the Intermedia Dynamic in the Age of User-Generated Content." This paper will be presented in August at the annual meeting of the AEJMC in Boston, MA. Congrats to these graduate students for their fine scholarship. Well done!

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.