CATS email list

If you'd like to receive CATS emails you can now subscribe to the CATS email list. To subscribe, send an email as follows:

To: listserver@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: [anything]
Message text: "subscribe osucats [Firstname] [Lastname]"

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CATS program: Autumn 2009

All meetings take place at 2:30 p.m., room JR106 (Journalism Building, ground Floor, map and directions)

09/25/09: First CATS Meeting

10/09/09: Dr. Brandon Van Der Heide “Sticky Cues: Deciphering Individual Impressions Online—a research presentation and discussion ”

10/16/09: Elizabeth Keifer “ Student’s research idea discussion”

11/06/09: Jatin Srivastava “Job talk”

11/20/09: Dr. Chul-joo Lee “ The role of internet engagement in eHealth – a research presentation and discussion”

12/04/09: Nick Geidner "The effects of an Internet news paywall on selective exposure"

Call for Manuscripts, Mass Communication and Society

Deadline: January 12, 2010

“The Facebook Election: New Media and the 2008 Presidential Campaign”
Special Symposium

Tom Johnson & Dave Perlmutter, Guest Editors

Some political observers dubbed the 2008 presidential campaign as the Facebook election. Barack Obama, in particular, employed Online Social-Interactive Media (OSIM) such as blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook to run a grassroots style campaign. Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul similarly campaigned using OSIM technology in their organizing efforts. The Obama campaign was keenly aware that voters, particularly the young, are not simply consumers of information, but conduits of information as well. They often replaced the professional filter of traditional media with a social one. OSIMs allowed candidates to do electronically what previously had to be done through shoe leather and phone banks: contact volunteers and donors, and schedule and promote events.

OSIMs changed the way candidates campaigned, how the media covered the election and how voters received information. In this special issue of Mass Communication & Society, we seek theoretically driven and empirically grounded manuscripts on the role of OSIMs in the 2008 election campaign. In particular, we seek submissions that explore the subject in one or several of the following ways:

• Candidates’ use of OSIMs: How did presidential candidates use OSIMs as a tool to present their message, recruit volunteers and to raise money? What effect did the OSIMs have on the way they ran campaigns?
• Voters’ use of OSIMs: How did voters use OSIMS to get information on the 2008 campaign? How credible and useful did they judge political information from OSIMs? What effect did OSIMs have on their political attitudes, cognitions and behaviors?
• Traditional Media and OSIMs: How did legacy media and their online counterparts cover the OSIM phenomenon? How did they employ OSIMs in their election coverage?

This special issue of Mass Communication and Society will appear at the end of 2010. Submitted papers should follow the standard submission procedures outlined in the inside back cover of the journal. Authors should specify in their submission letter that they wish their submission to be considered for the 2008 Campaign New Media Symposium and must be received by January 12, 2010.

First meeting today

The first CATS meeting of the quarter is today at 2:30pm in JR106. Whether your a seasoned researcher or a new grad student, if you're interested in this topic we hope you will join us.

New tech lab space

As many of you know, two new tech-oriented research spaces are being created in the Journalism building. Planning started more than a year old, and I understand that the work is now underway and that the spaces may be available soon. In the meantime, I thought everyone would like to see the floor plans. (I got a copy after asking about the status of another room.)

Twitter's long tail

A new study coming out of the Harvard Business School concludes that very few Twitter users send messages using the service, suggesting that it is used more like a broadcast medium than a peer-to-peer communication network. Specifically, the authors found that although about 4 in 5 (80%) Twitter users are followed by at least one other person, "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets." These conclusions are drawn based on analysis of the activities of a sample of 300,000 Tweeter users in May 2009.

See: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8089508.stm

OSU CATS at AEJMC 2009

We are very excited that CATS members have received important awards for their outstanding papers at the AEJMC 2009.

Dr. Dongyoung Sohn's paper "Anatomy of interaction experience: Distinguishing sensory, semantic, and behavioral dimensions of interactivity" has won the first place in the communication technology (CTEC) division - Faculty Paper Competition of AEJMC.

Also, a paper co-authored by four students (two of them, Michael Beam and Nick Geidner, are CATS members) has won the Top Three Student Paper Award in the CTEC division of AEJMC. Their paper title is "Gatekeeping and YouTube: News Filters and the Intermedia Dynamic in the Age of User-Generated Content."

The AEJMC 2009 convention takes place on August 5-8, Boston, Massachusetts.

Data.gov goes live

There's a new website sponsored by the federal government designed to facilitate access to a vast assortment of government-collected data. The index/archive is still relatively small, but it is expected to grow over the coming months and years. Take a look for yourself:

http://www.data.gov/

From the site

"The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead."