The International Communication Association presented its nine prestigious research awards to 12 communication scholars at its annual awards ceremony in Boston on Saturday, 28 May. Ted Zorn (U of Waikato) chaired the ICA Research Awards Committee, which selected the winners.

The 2011 honorees included:

• Jennings Bryant, Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award
• Kate Kenski, Bruce W. Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Outstanding Book Award
• Robert LaRose, Outstanding Article Award
• Michael Stohl, Applied/Public Policy Research Award
• Dmitri Williams, Young Scholar Award
• erin mcclellan, James Carey Urban Communication Award
• Robert McChesney, Communication as Agent of Change Award
• Sonia Livingstone, Communication Research as Collaborative Practice Award
• Janice Radway, Communication as Open Field Award

The Chaffee Productivity Award recognizes a scholar, or small group of collaborating scholars, for sustained work on a communication problem over a long period of time-with preference given to original work that is conceptually rich and makes an advance in communication knowledge. The 2011 recipient was Jennings Bryant, CIS Distinguished Research Professor, and Reagan Endowed Chair of Broadcasting in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at U of Alabama.

"Jennings Bryant meets the award criteria exemplarily," said the Chaffee Award Subcommittee of the ICA Research Awards Committee. "He has written 25 books, 77 book chapters, more than 250 conference papers-of which 27 have won awards, 20 scholarly encyclopedia entries, and 129 major technical or scientific reports.... His work is relevant to and highly cited by policy-makers in their respective fields. He has served the academic community, again worldwide, by his commitment to rigorous research on important questions. By all standards, national and international, he has advanced our field significantly."

The 2011 Outstanding Book Award-for a book published in the past 2 years and distinguished by its importance to the disciplines represented in ICA for the problem it addresses, and for its quality of writing and argument, and quality of evidence-went to Kate Kenski (Professor of Communication at U of Arizona), Bruce W. Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (both Professors in the Annenberg School of Communication at U of Pennsylvania), for their publication The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election (Oxford University Press, 2010).

"Capturing the dynamics of contemporary democracy in action, the book presents a theoretically grounded and methodologically rigorous analysis of key factors that helped to bring about the historic outcome," said the Outstanding Book Award Subcommittee. "The insights generated from this analysis are of interest to multiple areas of communication study, including political communication, mass communication, rhetoric, social influence, and interethnic communication. The unfolding of accessible writing and even-handed claims is a model for a scholarly audience as well as a wider public."

Robert LaRose, Professor and Director of MA Studies in the Department of Telecommunication at Michigan State University, was selected to receive the Outstanding Article Award for their paper "The Problem of Media Habits" (Communication Theory, 20(2)). The award recognizes an article published within the past 2 years in a refereed journal that is distinguished by its coherence of argument, quality of conceptual development, and effective use of evidence, especially one that promises to be influential over time.

"LaRose's work revisits what should be a core concept of media use research: Habits," said the Outstanding Article Award Subcommittee. "The committee chose this article because it advances our knowledge and understanding of this central topic. Committee members called the article 'truly outstanding,' 'compelling,' and 'intellectually stimulating.' LaRose synthesizes past research and theoretical arguments while attending to cogent critiques in a way that is simply elegant. The Committee is convinced that this outstanding article will have a significant impact on the field. This article should be a must for communication scholars and students."

The Applied/Public Policy Research Award, which recognizes a scholar or group of researchers who have produced a systematic body of research in communication studying a particular applied or policy problem for the betterment of society during the previous 2 years, went to Michael Stohl, Professor of Communication at U of California - Santa Barbara.

"Michael Stohl has achieved a compelling 30-year program of research on state terrorism and human rights," said the Outstanding Applied/Public Policy Award Subcommittee. "His work and that of his students, has, according to independent commentators, 'revolutionized the study of human rights by examining the causes of human rights abuses using empirical analysis of states' practices.'…Reviewers particularly noted the global focus of this and other work by Prof. Stohl, and its contributions to the betterment of society."

For the Young Scholar Award, given for a body of work following receipt of the Ph.D. that contributes to the field of communication and shows promise for continued development, based on the work's conceptual foundations and argumentative clarity, its rigor, and the recipient's productivity, the Awards Committee selected Dmitri Williams, Associate Professor at the U of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

Williams, wrote the Young Scholar Award Subcommittee, "has made important contributions to the field of communication at both theoretical and methodological levels. While studying relatively new phenomena, his scholarship is well grounded in prior communication research. He has excelled in working with industry to gain access to hard-to-obtain data and has also managed to secure impressive government support for his research. The committee is happy to award Dmitri Williams the Young Scholar Award."

The James Carey Urban Communication Award, which recognizes communication research that enhances urban social interaction and civic engagement in an age of global communication, this year was awarded to erin mcclellan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Boise State U.

"Dr. mcclellan has proposed to study Boston's City Hall Plaza to understand the rhetorical constructions discussed and performed by people who use city centers in the US," Carey Award Subcommittee said. "Conducting interviews and entering into the lives of urban citizens and urban planners, Dr. mcclellan will help us understand urban meaning making and associated interactions. In choosing this project, the committee felt Dr. mcclellan's was a strong proposal in the spirit of James Carey's interest in understanding urban identity and its relation to urban spaces."

The winner of the "Communication Research as an Agent of Change" (CRAC) Award, recognizing research that has a demonstrable impact on practice outside the academy, with clear benefits to the community, was Robert McChesney, Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the U of Illinois.

"Through his research guided advocacy, Robert McChesney has made significant contribution to public life with a powerful impact," said the CRAC subcommittee. "Taking the academic world to the general public, he has done much to shape the discussion of not only how to rethink journalism but also the profession. Robert's work has been translated into ten languages. His works help awake the public to an understanding of the negative impact of media corporations on peoples' lives in the ways they operate and inspire actions on the part of communities and the public. Robert McChesney has been a model of the public intellectual, and is thus a worthy recipient of the CRAC Award."

Sonia Livingstone, professor of Social Psychology and head of the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics and Political Science, was selected as the winner of the 2011 "Communication Research as Collaborative Practice" (CRCP) Award, which recognizes research that has a demonstrable impact on practice outside the academy, with clear benefits to the community.

Specifically, Livingstone won the award for her leadership of the EUkids II project. "The project researched online risks and opportunities for children in 25 European countries. Scholars from a wide range of institutions (particularly the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research in Germany, University of Oslo in Norway, and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia collaborated actively in the design of the research," the CRCP subcommittee noted. "Relationships were carefully built with policy makers and also regulators at the European and national level. Parental and educator organizations such as the Insafe network and non-governmental organizations such as Save the Children ensured practical impact on the ground."

Janice Radway, Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern U, was selected to receive the 2011 "Communication As Open Field" award, which recognizes researchers who have made important contributions to the field of communication from outside the discipline.

"Because Janice Radway has had a distinctive and long-term impact on communication research and has made a unique and invaluable contribution to the study of communication and to shaping it as an open, interdisciplinary endeavor, the Communication Research as an Open Field Award could not be awarded to a more deserving scholar," said the CROF subcommittee of the ICA Research Awards Committee. "Her work has substantially shifted the playing field in media studies by bringing together empirical literary approaches and ethnographically inspired methods to address the relation of women to popular media. Moreover, her work has become an inspiring tool to study television fiction in countries around the world. She has provided visibility to fiction as a reliable object to address the complexity of women's audience status in the diverse geographic and cultural modes of male-dominated culture."

ICA solicits nominations for these awards through the Newsletter each spring and makes the presentations at the annual conference. The awards competition, now in its 12th year, draws numerous nominations in all categories each year.