Communication and Technology Division
Annual Dordick Dissertation Award Winners
The 2013 Herbert S. Dordick dissertation award competition was open to all ICA members completing their dissertation in 2012. Results were reported at the Communication and Technology Division business meeting in London. For those who were unable to attend here is that information.
There were 22 submissions, an increase of 29% over last year. In the first round of judging 7 candidates received 2 out of 3 reviewers' votes for possible "Top Four" consideration. In round two the reviewers reexamined submission materials and more precisely ranked these 7 candidates from 1 to 4. Averaging the ranks resulted as follows.
1st place: Robert Shota Tokunaga, "Engagement with Novel Virtual Environments: The Role of Perceived Novelty in the Development of the Deficient Self-Regulation of Internet Use and Media Habits." dissertation completed at U of Arizona, USA. Now at U of Hawaii at Manoa, USA
2nd place: Ericka Menchen-Trevino, “Partisans and Dropouts: News Filtering in the Contemporary Media Environment” dissertation completed at Northwestern U, USA. Now at Erasmus U Rotterdam, Netherlands.
3rd place: Jessica Vitak, "Keeping Connected in the Facebook Age: The Relationship Between Facebook Use, Relationship Maintenance Strategies, and Relational Outcomes," dissertation completed at Michigan State U, USA. Now at U of Maryland, College Park, USA.
4th place: Aaron Shaw, "An Interactional Account of Online Collective Action," dissertation completed at U of California, Berkeley USA. Now at Northwestern U, USA.
Honorable Mention:
Brooke Foucault Welles, "A Multi-Theoretical, Multi-Level Investigation of the Structure of Social Relationships in Virtual Worlds," dissertation completed at Northwestern U, USA. Now at Northeastern U, USA.
Anders Olof Larsson, "Doing Things in Relation to Machines: Studies on Online Interactivity," dissertation completed at Uppsala U, Sweden. Now at U of Oslo, Norway.
Congratulations to these outstanding scholars!
Communication History
1. Divisional status for Communication History
First and foremost, as you may have seen elsewhere in this Newsletter, Communication History is now ICA’s newest Division! Our motion applying for this upgrade in status was officially approved at the ICA Board Meeting on 17th June. This is great news, and it’s good to be recognized in this way: but we couldn’t have done it without you. I mean that literally: the criterion for Division status is having 200+ folk in membership over a 3-year period, but if we drop below that threshold we return to being a humble Interest Group, so please do remember to include CHD membership when you pay your annual ICA subscription!
2. London 2013
The Communication History programme at the London 2013 Conference was well-received: we qualified for 10 sessions this year, and they all offered very interesting papers that stimulated discussion and debate. Our first high-density session seemed to work well, with both contributors and audience members saying they had found the format helpful and beneficial; and our first CHD (as it turned out to be!) Family Breakfast was successful in creating another space in which we could talk, get to know each other better and help build the sense of CHD being a friendly home – indeed, a family – for all its members. We hope to continue both these initiatives in future years.
I also attended the Seattle Planning Meeting held on 21 June 2013, and you can find my notes from that meeting at:
http://communicationhistory.org/minutes/Seattle-Planning-Meeting-2013.pdf
3. Preconference 2013
Our pre-conference in London, New Histories of Communication Study, organized by Dave Park and Pete Simonson, was a roaring success. With over 80 delegates, it was one of the largest pre-cons, and the two-day event delivered over 50 outstanding papers from delegates from around the world, together with plenary addresses from Elihu Katz and David Morrison. Details and photos from this event can be seen on the CHGD website at:
http://communicationhistory.org/precon/
4. Preconference 2014
Please remember: if you would like to propose a pre-conference to be sponsored by our Division at Seattle in 2014, it would be helpful if you could let me know as soon as possible. Please e-mail me with your thoughts at philip.lodge@viginmedia.com
5. CHD Committee
Deb Lubken stepped down from the role of CHIG Secretary at our Business Meeting on 18th June: our thanks to Deb for all her service. Nicole Maurantonio is now in post as Secretary to the Division.
Our current Vice Chair, Rick Popp, will become Chair of the Division after the Seattle Conference 2014, so we will be electing a new Vice Chair in September / October.
I think that brings us up to date for now: but as always, please just e-mail me if you have any queries or matters to raise.
-Philip Lodge
Environmental Communication Interest Group
As you may know, we had a very successful 2013 conference, our second year as an interest group. It was great to see and meet colleagues, hear about their work in the field, and get to know folks better. We have a full complement of officers now to share the increasing workload as we near 200 members, but please remember, we do need your help too as you'll see in the news below for this month. Do take part in the tasks that came about from our business meeting by visiting our discussion board on the ICA web site. As always if you have any questions, ideas, or comments please email Janel, Merav or me.
Recruiting new ECIG members
At our business meeting in London, we discussed ways of increasing the membership of the Environmental Communication Interest Group and the diversity of the group. This was partly in hopes of becoming a division as we are currently at 186 members and need at least 200 members for division status. The benefit of being a division is that we get to vote in ICA business, we get more money in our budget, and we get more sessions at the annual conference. This would also support ICA's initiative to increase internationality of the association.
We agreed that it would be best for us to use word of mouth to invite colleagues, either members of ICA that are not in the ECIG, or colleagues that are not even members of ICA. Members choose their divisions and interest groups when they join or renew their membership in September, or anytime in the ICA web site MyICA/Manage My Membership/Change My Sections. You can generate a list of current ECIG members in MyICA: choose the Social Networking menu and Find a Colleague. In the Search by Section box choose Environmental Communication from the drop down list.
We've started a discussion thread in MyICA/Organization Tools/Forums for folks to share ideas for what to say to colleagues to get them to join or switch to the Environmental Communication Interest Group (ECIG), or for reasons for a colleague to join ICA (and the ECIG). Please take part in the discussion to generate some persuasive language to increase our membership.
Updating of Environmental Communication entry in Wikipedia
Last year we talked about updating the Wikipedia entry of Environmental Communication. This came about after the chair became inspired by the Environmental History Wikipedia page. A couple of ideas were tossed around in our last meeting as to how to accomplish the task. One was for a member of ECIG to volunteer to coordinate a group of members to update/improve the page. Another was for one or a number of folks teaching Environmental Communication to Graduate or Undergraduate students to make it a project for their students.
If you are interested in this project, take part in the discussion thread in MyICA/Organization Tools/Forums and self-organize the creation of this important resource.
-Richard Doherty, ICA ECIG Chair
Feminist Scholarship Division
Natalia Rybas is the new incoming Vice Chair of FSD. She is a critical/cultural studies scholar and an assistant professor of communication studies at Indiana U East.
Our new Secretary is, Cara Wallis, a new media technologies scholar and assistant professor at U of Southern California.
Paula Gardner is new the Chair and Radhika Gajjala is the outgoing Chair.
Instructional and Development Communication
1. Congratulations to Scott Christen (Tennessee Tech U) on being selected as the new Website and Social Media Coordinator for the division. Please send any calls for papers, member photos, research spotlights, job announcements, and anything else relevant to the membership to Scott at schristen@tntech.edu.
2. IDD invites nominations for our junior officer shadowing program. The Junior Officer program gives graduate students the chance to be mentored by one of the four officers in our division (i.e., Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, and Website and Social Media Coordinator). Throughout the year, the junior officers would be included in all communication about the division and planning for the conference to learn about the behind the scenes work for the division and conference. At the annual conference, the junior officers would have the opportunity to assist in running the business meeting and attend the planners meeting.
Students may self-nominate or be nominated by a faculty member to take part in the program. In the 1 page nomination letter, the student or faculty member should:
a) list the name, affiliation, and all contact information for the student,
b) identify which office (i.e., chair, vice-chair, secretary, or website and social media coordinator) the student would like to shadow,
c) provide a brief explanation of the student’s interest and current work with instructional or developmental communication activities.
All nominations for the Junior Officer Program should be submitted to IDD Chair, Brandi Frisby, at brandi.frisby@uky.edu by 15 August 2013.
Organizational Communication Division
The London conference was outstanding in many ways. Here are a few highlights of the division’s program.
Just prior to the main conference, the division hosted a doctoral consortium preconference on “Expanding Your Scholarly Comfort Zone.” Twenty students from 5 different countries and 15 universities participated in the full day event, which touched on topics such as doing dissertations that get done but also push the envelope; expanding into new approaches, methods, and novel research domains; taking smart academic risks; and transitioning from graduate student to scholarly professional. The day was guided by 13 faculty mentors (from 8 additional universities and 4 more countries): Kevin Barge, Boris Brummans, Patrice Buzzanell, Ling Chen, Johny Garner, Matt Koschmann, Shiv Ganesh, Anne Nicotera, Linda Putnam, Keri Stephens, Paaige Turner, Bart van den Hooff, and Craig Scott (who organized the event). Feedback from the event suggested this was another very successful preconference for the division.
During the conference itself, the Research Escalator (picture below) again proved to be a big hit with participants. It was very ably organized by Mary Simpson and Johny Garner.
At the business meeting, the 2013 W. Charles Redding Dissertation Award was presented to Jody Lee Shepherd Jahn and her co-advisors, Karen K. Myers and Linda L. Putnam, from U of California Santa Barbara. In addition, the 2013 Fredric M. Jablin Award for Outstanding Contributions to Organizational Communication was presented to Cynthia Stohl, also from U of California Santa Barbara. Finally, two candidates were approved for Vice Chair-Elect: Catrin Johanssen (Mid Sweden University) and Bart van den Hooff (VU University, Amsterdam).
This year’s winner of the Organizational Communication Division’s Waveland Press Interactive Display award goes to Jeffrey Treem (U of Texas), Stephanie Dailey (U of Texas), and Casey Spruill (Northwestern U ) for this paper, When Social Media Meets Workplace Settings: Differing Technological Frames and Expectations of Organizational Members (picture below). Their interactive presentation engaged their audience by using Post-it Notes to capture what people think of when they hear the word social media.
Philosophy, Theory and Critique
Are there courses, graduate or undergraduate, with the title "Philosophy of Communication?" The literature with that title continues to grow. Is our teaching, our curriculum beginning to include it also? If you teach such a course or know of others who do, please send that information to Clifford Christians, U of Illinios-Urbana, USA. [cchrstns@illinois.edu]
