COPS students dominate MCS division of AEJMC 2008

I just received word that four COPS students have won paper prizes in the Mass Communication and Society division of AEJMC at this year's conference in Chicago. First, COPS Ph.D. student collaborators Heather LaMarre, Michael Beam, and Kristen Landreville are taking the top student paper prize with their submission "The Irony of Satire: People See What They Want to See in The Colbert Report." As if this weren't enough good news, Ph.D. student Fei "Chris" Shen will be receiving the second place prize with his submission "Staying Alive: The Impact of Media Momentum on Candidacy Attrition in the 1980-2004 Primaries." I'm sure you remember that Chris won top student paper prize last year in the same division. With their work, COPS members can claim six consecutive years of top paper prizes at AEJMC. This kind of reminds me of MAPOR 2005, when two COPS students took the top 2 slots in the MAPOR Fellows student paper competition. (Incidently, two OSU faculty members, Osei Appiah and Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, are receiving a top 3 paper prize in the Communication Theory and Methodology division this year as well).