The International Communication Association presented three prestigious research awards to six communication scholars at its annual business meeting in San Francisco on Saturday, May 26. Robert E. Sanders (SUNY-Albany) chaired the ICA Research Awards Committee, which selected the winners. The 2007 honorees included:

• Clifford Nass and Scott Brave, Outstanding Book Award
• Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl, Outstanding Article Award
• Claes H. de Vreese, Young Scholar Award

The 2006 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 Clifford I. Nass, Professor of Communication at Stanford U, and Scott Brave, cofounder and Chief Technology Officer at Baynote, Inc., for their work Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Enhances the Human-Computer Relationship (MIT Press, 2005). "Wired for Speech provides the reader with vivid examples of how human beings engage with voice technologies in social settings and the role these practices play in interactions between people and machines," said the Outstanding Book Award Subcommittee of the ICA Research Awards Committee. "It is a well crafted and eloquently written synthesis of a decade-long and highly influential research program…it also speaks to the broad ICA audience by addressing the nature of language and the human response to it."

Bruce Bimber, Andrew Flanagin, and Cynthia Stohl, all at U of California - Santa Barbara, were selected to receive the 2007 Outstanding Article Award for their paper "Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment"
(Communication Theory 15(4)). 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. "The article makes a clear and well-rounded case for examining collective action as a primarily communicative phenomenon and effectively uses empirical evidence to radically reconceptualize collective action theory in a rapidly changing world of new media and communication technologies," said the Outstanding Article Subcommittee. "The authors offer a sophisticated update that should be of interest not just to communication scholars, but psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and even historians. This paper has the potential to trigger a new generation of scholarship and critical engagement with many in the social sciences."

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 Claes H. de Vreese, Professor and Chair of Political Communication at U of Amsterdam. "Dr. de Vreese's research is both theoretically and methodologically sophisticated," wrote Amy Nathanson, chair of the Young Scholar Award Subcommittee of the ICA Research Awards Committee. "He has published 3 books and 36 peer-reviewed publications and has received numerous awards and grants for his work….It is clear that Dr. de Vreese is an outstanding scholar and has a long and promising career ahead of him."

Additionally, Gary Gumpert of the Urban Communication Foundation introduced the newly established James Carey Urban Communication Award. The award, which will be given for the first time in 2008, will support communication research that enhances urban social interaction and civic engagement in an age of global communication. It will encourage applied research on the role of city and community at a time when communication technology alters the parameters of the urban landscape, and will facilitates research in progress or in the planning stages. The award gives priority to projects that study places where traditional modes of communication are being juxtaposed with the new, including the adoption of changes that may have a radical impact. Proposals from developing nations are encouraged. The award is for the sum of $1,500 to $3,000.

Two further awards, the Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award and the Outstanding Applied/Public Policy Research Program Award, are usually given each year at the ICA Business Meeting. However, due to a lack of nominations, the Awards Committee did not give either award in 2007. The Awards Committee and ICA president Sonia Livingstone encourage association members to actively participate in the awards process by submitting nominations for each award.