ICA Political Communication Graduate Student Preconference

University of Arizona, May 23-24, 2012
Call for Abstracts
Sponsoring Division: Political Communication

Aims: The preconference goals include providing guidance, feedback and professional socialization to political communication graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels, introducing graduate students to ICA and inviting them to take part in the academic discourse on political communication through ICA, and cultivating a network among young political communication scholars. To achieve these goals, the preconference will bring together a select group of graduate students working on political communication projects and provide them with the opportunity to present and discuss their projects in a constructive atmosphere. The preconference will also address common issues graduate students face, including working toward publication and building a c.v. The event will take place at the University of Arizona in Tucson, on May 23-24, 2012.

Submission guidelines:
Graduate students working on political communication projects are invited to submit abstracts of their research projects. Studies of communication dealing with government, political media, policy, political figures, citizens, campaigns, and advocacy groups are all within the purview of the division. Abstracts that address political communication problems at all levels of analysis using a variety of theories and methods are welcome.

Abstracts should be no longer than 750 words of text (plus figures and references) that include an introduction of the theoretical or conceptual foundations of the project, research questions, methods, preliminary findings (if available), conclusions, and research significance. Abstracts will undergo review; please be sure to remove any identifying information. Projects at all stages will be considered, including research currently in the stages of data collection or analysis. Evaluation criteria will include quality of argument, methodological rigor, and importance of project to theory building in political communication.

Please submit abstracts as an attachment in PDF or Word format to ICA.gradstudent.preconf@gmail.com. Indicate whether the project is a thesis or dissertation project, specify the stage of work (e.g., writing of the research proposal, complete and defended proposal, initial data collection, advanced data collection, data analysis, final writing/defending) and include author names, institutional affiliation, regular mailing address, fax number and email address in a separate document, or as part of the main message.

The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2011. Acceptance and rejection decisions will go out on February 15, 2012.

Preconference Committee: Kevin Coe (University of Arizona), Claes de Vreese (University of Amsterdam), Jill Edy (University of Oklahoma), Lance Holbert (Ohio State University), Kate Kenski (U of Arizona) and Yariv Tsfati (University of Haifa)

For more information please contact Yariv Tsfati, Division Chair, Department of Communication University of Haifa, 31905 ISRAEL, Fax ++972-4-8240120, Email ytsfati@com.haifa.ac.il