Congratulations to Hyunjin Song on Dissertation Defense

I am proud and happy to announce that Hyunjin Song today successfully defended his dissertation, "A Dynamic Longitudinal Examination of Social Networks and Political Behavior: The Moderating Effect of Local Network Properties and Its Implication for Social Influence Processes." Jin did a great job on the dissertation and defense, and now looks forward to his new position at the University of Vienna in Austria. Please help me congratulate Jin!

Brian Weeks moving to University of Michigan

Congratulations to Brian Weeks, who has accepted a position in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan.  He will also have an appointment in the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Brian earned his PhD from the School of Communication at Ohio State University last year, and has spent the past year working with Homero Gil de Zúñiga at the University of Vienna.  Well done, Brian!

Hyunjin Song Accepts Position in Vienna

Please help me congratulate Hyunjin "Jin" Song on his acceptance of a job offer at the University of Vienna in Austria. Starting this summer, Jin will be Assistant Professor in the Department of Methods in the Social Sciences at the University of Vienna. There, he will be applying his considerable theoretical and methodological skills to the study of text analysis. Jin also has his dissertation distributed to his committee and a defense scheduled later this month. Congrats, Jin -- your hard work continues to pay off!

Peifer accepts job in Journalism at Indiana U

I am pleased to announce that Jason Peifer has accepted an offer to be an Assistant Professor of Journalism in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington starting in the Fall.  Jason, who has a professional background in journalism, is particularly interested in political entertainment.  He is currently working on his dissertation, which examines how news parody influences perceptions of journalism's importance.  

Congratulations, Jason!

COPS Alumnus Elizabeth Stoycheff has a first-authored article in the November issue of Political Communication on Internet and Democratization

Dr. Elizabeth Stoycheff, an alumnus of COPS and currently an assistant professor at Wayne State University, has a first-authored article in this month's Political Communication examining the cross-national relationship between Internet penetration, Internet use, and democratic attitudes. The title and abstract (with link to the article) are below. Congrats!

What’s the Bandwidth for Democracy? Deconstructing Internet Penetration and Citizen Attitudes About Governance

Recent world events have highlighted the democratic potential of information and communication technologies. This article draws upon the democracy literature to develop a multilevel conceptual framework that links country-level Internet penetration and individual-level Internet use to citizen attitudes about governance in 34 developing countries. In doing so, it deconstructs “Internet penetration” into three dimensions—hardware (e.g., computers), users, and broadband—to provide greater theoretical specificity about how Internet diffusion leads citizens to adopt democratic attitudes. Results from multilevel analyses indicate that individual Internet use and the diffusion of Internet hardware shape citizens’ perceptions of the supply of democracy in their countries, and individual Internet use and diffusion of broadband lead citizens to adopt stronger democratic preferences. Theoretical and normative implications are discussed.

Hyunjin Song Lead-Authored Communication Theory Paper Now Online

Congrats to (Hyun)Jin Song, whose first-authored paper "Metacognitive Model of Ambivalence: The Role of Multiple Beliefs and Metacognitions in Creating Attitude Ambivalence" in Communication Theory is now available online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/comt.12050/abstract This is one of three lead or sole-authored papers Jin currently has in press; the other two are at Journal of Communication and Political Communication.

Nisbet Gives Talk at USC

Erik Nisbet gave a guest lecture on October 22nd at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication entitled "The Media War Over Crimea and Russian Public Opinion" as part of its Center for Public Diplomacy's "Conversations in Public Diplomacy" regular lecture series.

Garrett Gives Talk as Part of University of Missouri Political Communication Institute's Distinguished Lecture Series

Congratulations to Kelly Garrett on his October 17th presentation "Political Misperception in the Age of the Internet" as part of the University of Missouri's Political Communication Institute's Distinguished Lecture Series.

COPS Alum Lindsay Hoffman to Moderate U.S. Senate & House Debates in Delaware

Former COPS member and University of Delaware associate professor Lindsay Hoffman will be one of the three moderators of state of Delaware's U.S. Senate and House debates tonight. Pretty cool! http://sites.udel.edu/debates2014/

Bond's Paper on Facebook and Ideology Accepted in American Political Science Review

Robert Bond's paper on the use of Facebook in Estimating Ideology has been accepted for publication by the American Political Science Review. Details are below. Congrats Robert!

TITLE: Quantifying Social Media’s Political Space: Estimating Ideology from Publicly Revealed Preferences on Facebook

AUTHORS: Robert Bond and Solomon Messing

ABSTRACT:  We demonstrate that social media data represent a useful resource for testing models of legislative and individual-level political behavior and attitudes. First, we develop a model to estimate the ideology of politicians and their supporters using social media data on individual citizens’ endorsements of political figures. Our measure allows us to place politicians and more than 6 million citizens who are active in social media on the same metric. We validate the ideological estimates that result from the scaling process by showing they correlate highly with existing measures of ideology from Congress, and with individual-level self- reported political views. Finally, we use these measures to study the relationship between ideology and age, social relationships and ideology, and the relationship between friend ideology and turnout.

Song has Sole-Author Paper with Meta-Analayis of ERGM Results Accepted in Journal of Communication

Congratulations to Hyunjin Song, who recently had a sole-authored paper accepted for publication in Journal of Communication. The manuscript, "Uncovering the Structural Underpinnings of Political Discussion Networks: Evidence from an Exponential Random Graph Model," is one of the first such analyses published in communication, and almost certainly the first published that integrates 25 such analyses using meta-analysis techniques. Congrats Jin!

Former COPS Member Lindsay Hoffman Quoted in New York Times

A shout out to founding COPS member Lindsay Hoffman, now associate professor at the University of Delaware, who was quoted today in an article in the New York Times on the role of Facebook in political campaigns.

Neo wins NCA award

Congratulations to Rachel Neo. Her paper, “Examining the Influence of SNS Network Homogeneity on Actual Voting Behavior Via Affective Responses toward In and Out-Group Presidential Candidates As Intervening Variables” was named one of four Top Student Papers in the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association.

Stoycheff, Nisbet win AEJMC Paper Award

Congratulations to former (is there such a thing? COPS-4-LIFE!) COPS member Elizabeth Stoycheff, COPS member Erik Nisbet, and Dmitry Epstein for winning first place in the Robert L. Stevenson Paper Competition of the International Communication Division of AEJMC. Their paper, "Differential Effects of Information-Rich and Information-Poor Internet Use on Citizens' Demand for Democracy" was presented last week at the AEJMC conference in Montreal.

Nisbet, Cooper and Garrett Award Winning Paper in Press at ANNALS

Congratulations to Erik Nisbet, Kaatie Cooper, and Kelly Garrett for their top-3 paper award winning AEJMC paper, "The Partisan Brain: How Dissonant Science Messages Lead Conservatives and Liberals to (Dis)trust Science." The paper was presented to the ComSHER division at the AEJMC conference last week, and is in press at the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. It can be found here: http://rkellygarrett.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Prepress-Nisbet-et-al.-Partisan-brain.pdf