New publications by COPS members

COPS members have several publications in print or in press this month. More details below:

Epstein, D., Nisbet, E. C. & Gillespie, T. (2011). Who's Responsible for the Digital Divide? Public Perceptions and Policy Implications. The Information Society: An International Journal, 27(2), 92-104. doi: 10.1080/01972243.2011.548695

Garrett, R. K. (2011), Troubling Consequences of Online Political Rumoring. Human Communication Research, 37: 255–274. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2010.01401.x

Holbert, L., Hmielowski, J., and Weeks, B. (in press). Clarifying Relations between Ideology and Ideologically-Oriented Cable TV News Use: A Case of Suppression. Communication Research.

Nisbet on anti-Mubarak protests in Egypt

Erik Nisbet and Teresa Myer’s recent publication in Political Communication (available here) prompted GWU professor of political science John Sides to reflect on Al Jazeera's role in the current situation in Egypt. The post on the Monkey Cage also includes a thoughtful response from Erik on this issue.

On a related note, Erik has also discussed Al Jazeera’s impact on the Egyptian protests in a post of his own on bigthink.com.

Knobloch-Westerwick and Kleinman work accepted at CR

Congratulations to COPS members Silivia Knobloch-Westerwick and Steve Kleinman for having their paper, “Pre-Election Selective Exposure: Confirmation Bias versus Informational Utility” accepted for publication at Communication Research. As many of you may remember, Steve and Silvia presented this work at COPS in April last year, and a provocative conversation followed.

Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Kleinman, S. (in press). Pre-Election Selective Exposure: Confirmation Bias versus Informational Utility. Communication Research.

Publishing of Political Communication Methods Sourcebook

"The Sourcebook for Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques" has been published by Routledge (2011 publication date). COPS member R. Lance Holbert is a co-editor for the volume. In addition, this work is littered with contributions from former and current COPS members. COPS-related chapter topics include survey panel designs (Eveland and Morey), current trends in survey research (Hoffman), secondary analysis (Holbert and Hmielowski), structural equation modeling (Holbert and LaMarre), mediation (Hayes and Myers), and general methods trends within the field (Kosicki).

COPS Publication: "E-Democracy writ small: The impact of the Internet on citizen access to local elected officials"

COPS member Kelly Garrett has a co-authored article in Information, Communication & Society that is now available online.  Below is the citation and abstract. 

Garrett, R. & Jensen, M. J. (2010). E-Democracy writ small: The impact of the Internet on citizen access to local elected officials. Information, Communication & Society

Abstract
This article examines how elected officials' interactions with neighborhood groups, business interests, issue groups, and other stakeholders are shaped by their use of the Internet and by characteristics of local e-government infrastructure. The study utilizes data from a nationwide survey of local elected officials and from an analysis of corresponding local government websites. Results show that Internet use is associated with a significant increase in contact with stakeholders and with increasingly diverse types of communication partners, even after controlling for officials' general propensity to communicate. Both time spent on official duties and city size moderate the influence of Internet use. However, local government web sites do not appear to have a substantive influence on citizen's participation in policy making.

COPS Student Publications in November

Current and former student members of COPS have peer-reviewed publications that recently appeared in November. Current COPS doctoral candidate Ivan Dylko has an article appearing in the November issue of International Journal of Public Opinion Research entitled "An Examination of Methodological and Theoretical Problems Arising from the Use of Political Participation Indexes in Political Communication Research." Teresa Myers, a former student member of COPS who is now a post-doctoral researcher, has a co-authored article in the November issue of Political Communication entitled "Challenging the State: Transnational TV and Political Identity in the Middle East." Congrats to both!

COPS Profs at "Political Communication: The State of the Field in the 21st Century" Conference

COPS professors Andrew Hayes, Lance Holbert, and William "Chip" Eveland are attending the "Political Communication: The State of the Field in the 21st Century" three-day conference at the Annenberg Public Policy Center this week. This conference is designed to produce a subsequent handbook of political communication that will benefit not only from a large group of scholars working independently, but also by working together to make each individual contribution better through deliberation and feedback from the larger group.

Hayes is part of a group on "Interpersonal and Small Group Political Communication" and will be writing a subsequent chapter on the "Spiral of Silence." Holbert is part of a group on "Psychological Theories of Media Effects" and will be writing a subsequent chapter on "Uses and Gratifications." Eveland is part of the group on "Political Information Processing and Processing Models" and will be writing a subsequent chapter on "Communication Modalities and Political Knowledge." In total, approximately 60 scholars from communication, political science, psychology, and sociology are attending this event and contributing to the resulting book to be published by Oxford University Press.

Congrats to Brian Weeks!

I just received my September issue of Mass Communication & Society and noticed that Brian Weeks is the first author of the lead manuscript. Congrats, Brian!

UPDATE: The OSU Research Communications Office put out a press release about Brian's study.

Latest Issue of Journal of Communication

The OSU School of Communication is well represented in the March 2010 issue of Journal of Communication. First, Lance Holbert, Kelly Garrett, and doctoral student Laurel Gleason published "A New Era of Minimal Effects? A Response to Bennett and Iyengar." Later in the issue School of Communication Director Carroll Glynn and former COPS member (and Andrew Hayes M.A. advisee) Mike Huge published "Hostile Media and the Campaign Trail: Perceived Media Bias in the Race for Governor." Congrats!

LaMarre and Landreville Manuscript Published in Mass Communication & Society

The Autumn 2009 issue of the journal Mass Communication & Society just crossed my desk. In it is an interesting paper by COPS alumnus and current University of Minnesota professor Heather LaMarre and COPS' own Kristen Landreville. Their paper, "When is Fiction as Good as Fact? Comparing the Influence of Documentary and Historical Reenactment Films on Engagement, Affect, Issue Interest, and Learning" is part of a special symposium in the issue on documentary films. Congratulations Heather and Kristen!

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).

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!

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.