Name (affiliation): Carina Weinmann (University of Mannheim)

Paper title: Measuring Political Thinking: Development and Validation of a Scale for “Deliberation Within”

Co-authors (if any): –

Publication reference (if any; APA 6th): –

Q: What should people remember from your paper? (Please give the one main finding and/or take-home message of your research.)

A: In my paper, I developed and validated a psychometric scale to measure internal deliberative thought processes (i.e., “deliberation within”, Goodin, 2000). In the beginning, this project was rather based on egoistic motives as I needed this measurement for my dissertation. However, since I had the chance to present it to a broader audience, I hope that many scholars might find it useful for their own work in related areas.

Q: Was your paper part of a coherent session? Did the papers talk to each other? In which ways? What were the concerns shared by the papers?

A: My paper was part of a session on theoretical and methodological issues in research on political discussion and deliberation. Apart from the subject – interpersonal political discussion – the papers were rather different in their approaches and concerns. However, since there were many researchers sharing similar concerns in the audience, the presentations were followed by a lot of interesting comments and questions on all of them, which I think all of the presenters benefited from.

Q: Did you see fascinating/innovative/inspiring presentations at this year’s conference? What about them struck you as outstanding? (Please give your general impression and perhaps focus on one specific paper that stood out for you.)

A: What I like most about the ICA annual conference is that you learn about issues and perspectives which you usually not get in contact with when working on your own projects. Like in the years before, I was fascinated by the diversity and innovative strength of our field, and I enjoyed talking to scholars from many different areas. However, the session which impressed me most this year was not a paper session but the Blue Sky Workshop “Tips, Tricks and Hacks for Careers Inside Academia” organized by the Student and Early Career Advisory Committee (SECAC). In this workshop, two Associate Professors – Anne Kaun from Södertörn University (Sweden) and Nicholas Bowman from West Virginia University (USA) – as well as former ICA president Cynthia Stohl shared their personal career experiences with us. All of them spoke very openly about their past, including the setbacks and failures in their careers and personal lives. Besides, they spent a lot of time to answer all of our questions as young scholars, even after the workshop was finished. I found this workshop to be incredibly helpful for my own career planning and hope that the SECAC will organize a similar one in the next years.

Q: I will always remember the conference in Fukuoka because…

A: … it was a first time conference for me in at least two ways: Apart from Istanbul, I have never been to Asia before, and it was a truly impressing experience for me to get to know a culture which is so very different from the European one. Secondly, with this paper I had my first single author presentation in Fukuoka. As you can imagine I was incredibly excited and nervous at the same time. However, having received the Best Student Paper Award for this paper gave me a lot of confidence. Therefore, I would like to thank you again for this recognition and honor.

Goodin, R. E. (2000). Democratic deliberation within. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 29(1), 81–109. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2000.00081.x  

Name (affiliation): Lukas Otto (University of Koblenz-Landau)

Paper title: Beyond Simple Valence: Discrete Emotions as Mediators of Political Communication Effects on Trust in Politicians

Co-authors (if any): –

Publication reference (if any; APA 6th): –

Q: What should people remember from your paper? (Please give the one main finding and/or take-home message of your research.)

A: Emotions are important for the judgment of trust in political communication contexts, however not every emotion is equally important. Control appraisals of emotions are crucial to decide which emotional response to political communication shapes a subsequent trust judgment. As a consequence emotions like anger or pride can be mediators of media effects on trust in politicians while fear or sadness not attributed to the politician but to the situation.

Q: Was your paper part of a coherent session? Did the papers talk to each other? In which ways? What were the concerns shared by the papers?

A: The session was entitled “Politicians in the news” and some of the papers talked to each other in the way that they investigated judgments of politicians from very different perspectives, for example politicians as satirical targets in television or trait inferences about politicians. These papers did not only share the topic but also attempted to investigate the underlying mechanisms of judgments on political leaders, which was very inspiring.

Q: Did you see fascinating/innovative/inspiring presentations at this year’s conference? What about them struck you as outstanding? (Please give your general impression and perhaps focus on one specific paper that stood out for you.)

A: The overall impression of this year’s conference is really good. I saw a huge amount of good work. In general I would say that the sessions of the Political Communication division getting more diverse and more sophisticated in terms of methodological approaches. Thus, if I have to mention one single paper I would go with the simulation study by Scharkow and Bachl on the effects of reliability in content analyses and surveys on the measurement of media effects. A very important study with an innovative method and a clear message: Make sure to use reliable measures in content analyzes as well as in surveys or it will be likely that you underestimate media effects.

Q: I will always remember the conference in Fukuoka because…

A: Japan was such a different experience from conferences in and travelling to Europe or the US. Coming to Japan for the first time, I will remember the kindness of Japanese people, the interesting cultural differences and – of course – the tasty Japanese food in Fukuoka!

Name (affiliation): Nicolas M. Anspach (York College of Pennsylvania)

Paper title: The Inadvertent Audience: How Online Peer Influence Mitigates Selective Exposure

Co-authors (if any): –

Publication reference (if any; APA 6th): Under review 

Q: What should people remember from your paper? (Please give the one main finding and/or take-home message of your research.)

A: I find that online endorsements and discussions serve as heuristics when deciding which content to consume, outweighing partisan selectivity. This effect is only significant when the activity comes from friends or family members; social influence attributed to fictional individuals does not serve as a heuristic. My hope is that this finding will bridge the gap between the theoretical expectations of behaviors associated with social media and the null results usually reported in social media studies that use fictional or unfamiliar users to post political content.

Q: Back when you presented your award-winning paper, was it part of a coherent session? Did the papers talk to each other? In which ways? What were the concerns shared by the papers?

A: Many of the papers presented at our session investigated the intersection of politics and social media – whether it was polarization, learning, or selectivity. Much of the discussion centered on the difficulty of collecting quality data from social media without access to the back end of Facebook. Lab experiments give us some insight, but how well they can generalize to the real world is still a question for debate.

Q: Did you see fascinating/innovative/inspiring presentations at this year’s conference in Philadelphia? What about them struck you as outstanding? (Please give your general impression and perhaps focus on one specific paper that stood out for you.)

A: –

Q: I will always remember the conference in Philadelphia because…

A: I attended grad school in Philadelphia, so it was nice to finally show off our city to my colleagues from out of town.

Name (affiliation):  Yanna Krupnikov (Stony Brook University)  

Paper title:  Citizen Engagement (and Disengagement) in Response to Social Ills

Co-authors (if any): Adam Levine (Cornell University)

Publication reference (if any; APA 6th):  Under review

Q: What should people remember from your paper? (Please give the one main finding and/or take-home message of your research.)

A:  At any given point in time people can focus their efforts and attention on a variety of different political problems and issues. The type of information people receive – and the way that information is presented – can play a key role in determining the way people focus their attention and eventually take political action.

Q: Back when you presented your award-winning paper, was it part of a coherent session? Did the papers talk to each other? In which ways? What were the concerns shared by the papers?

A: If I recall correctly, the paper was part of a session on conditions under which political information stands to have the greatest effect on people.

Q: Did you see fascinating/innovative/inspiring presentations at this year’s conference in Philadelphia? What about them struck you as outstanding? (Please give your general impression and perhaps focus on one specific paper that stood out for you.)

A:  There were a number of papers and panels that focused on the way political rhetoric shapes action that were conducting research using innovative and creative experimental approaches.

Q: I will always remember the conference in Philadelphia because…

A:  The conference had many excellent panels.