Awards

Political Communication Division

Interest Group Awards

Listed here are awards given by the Interest Group to its members. Interests Groups are smaller communities within NCA's large membership that provide a range of resources including networking opportunities, Annual Convention programming, leadership opportunities, awards, and specialized information dissemination channels, among others.

Read more about this Interest Group.


Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award

Year Award Winner
2023 Emily Van Duyn, Democracy Lives in Darkness: How and Why People Keep Their Politics a Secret, published by Oxford University Press in 2021
  Melissa Aronczyk & Maria I. Espinoza, A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism, published by Oxford University Press in 2021
2022 Stephen J. Heidt, Resowing the Seeds of War: Presidential Peace Rhetoric since 1945, published by Michigan State University Press in 2021
  Joshua M. Scacco & Kevin Coe, The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times, published by Oxford University Press in 2021
  Sarah Sobieraj, Credible Threat: Attacks Against Women Online and the Future of Democracy, published by Oxford University Press in 2020
  (Honorable Mention) Michael McDevitt, Where Ideas Go to Die: The Fate of Intellect in American Journalism, published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
2021 Dannagal G. Young, Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States (2019)
2020 Ashley Hinck, Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World (LSU Press, 2019)
2019 Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Cyber-War: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President – What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know (Oxford University Press, 2018)
2019 Sharon E. Jarvis and Soo-Hye Han, Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t: How Journalists Sideline Electoral Participation (Without Even Knowing It) (Penn State University Press, 2018)
2018 Joel Penney, The Citizen Marketer: Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age (Oxford University Press, 2017)
2017 Marwan M. Kraidy (2017). The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World. (Harvard University Press, 2016)
2016 Michael Lee (2014). Creating Conservatism: Postwar Words that Made an American Movement. Michigan State University Press.
2015 Jennifer Stromer-Galley (2014). Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age. New York: Oxford University Press.
2014 Mary Stuckey (2013). The Good Neighbor: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of American Power. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
2013 Brian Kaylor (2012). Presidential Campaign Rhetoric in an Age of Confessional Politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
2012 Kate Kensi, Bruce W. Hardy, & Kathleen H. Jamieson (2010). The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election. Oxford University Press.
2011 Marwan M. Kraidy (2010). Reality television and Arab politics: Contention in public life. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
2010 Geoffrey Baym (2009). From Cronkite to Colbert: The evolution of broadcast news. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
2009 David Domke & Kevin Coe (2007). The God strategy: How religion became a political weapon in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
2008 Carol K. Winkler (2006). In the name of terrorism: Presidents on political violence in the post-world war II era. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
2007 Sharon E. Jarvis (2005). The talk of the party: Political labels, symbolic capital and American life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Michael Pfau Outstanding Article Award

Year Award Winner
2023 Noor Ghazal Aswad, "Radical Rhetoric: Toward a Telos of Solidarity, Rhetoric and Public Affairs," published in Rhetoric & Public Affairs in 2021
2022 Allison M. Prasch, “The Rise of the Global Rhetorical Presidency,” published in Presidential Studies Quarterly in 2021
2021 Hsuan-Ting Chen, Lei Guo, and Chris Chao Su,"Network Agenda Setting, Partisan Selective Exposure, and Opinion Repertoire: The Effects of Pro- and Counter-Attitudinal Media in Hong Kong"
2020 Robert C. Rowland, "The populist and nationalist roots of Trump's rhetoric" Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 22(3), 343-388
2019 Ashley Muddiman and Natalie Jomini Stroud, "News Values, Cognitive Biases, and Partisan Incivility in Comment Sections" Journal of Communication, 67(4), 586-609
2018 Benjamin R. Warner & Astrid Villamil, "A Test of Imagined Contact as a Means to Improve Cross-Pratisan Feelings and Reduce Attribution of Malevolence and Acceptance of Political Violence" Communication Monographs, 84:4, 447-465
  Michael J. Lee, "Us, Them, and the War on Terror: Reassessing George W. Bush's Rhetorical Legacy" Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 14:1, 3-30
2017 Josh Scacco and Kevin Coe, "The Ubiquitous Presidency: Toward a New paradigm for Studying Presidential Communication" International Journal of Communication
2016 Michael Serazio (2014). The New Media Designs of Political Consultants: Campaign Production in a Fragmented Era. Journal of Communication, 64 (4), 743-763. 
2015 Michael L. Butterworth (2014). Nate Silver and Campaign 2012: Sport, the Statistical Frame, and the Rhetoric of Electoral Forecasting. Journal of Communication 64, 895-914.
2014 Mitchell S. McKinney and Benjamin R. Warner, “Do presidential debates matter? Examining a decade of campaign debate effects.” Argumentation and Advocacy 49, 238-258.
2013 Kevin Coe & Anthony Schmidt (2012). America in Black and White: Locating Race in the Modern Presidency, 1933-2011. Journal of Communication 62, 609-627.
2012 Karen V. Anderson (2011). “Rhymes with Blunt": Pornification and U.S. Political Culture. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 14(2), 327-368.
2011 Stroud, N. J. (2010). Polarization and partisan selective exposure. Journal of Communication 60(3), 556-576.
2010 Anderson, F. D., King, A., & McClure, K. (2009). Kenneth Burke’s dramatic form criticism. In J. A. Kuypers (Ed.), Rhetorical Criticism: Perspectives in Action (pp. 143-163). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
2009 Rowland, R., & Jones, J. (2007). Recasting the American dream and American politics: Barack Obama’s keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Quarterly Journal of Speech 93, 425-448.
2008 Coe, K., & Domke, D. (2006). Petitioners or prophets? Presidential discourse, God, and the ascendancy of religious conservatives. Journal of Communication 56, 309-330.
2007 Mitchell, G. R. (2006). Team B intelligence coups. Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, 144-173.

Lynda Lee Kaid Outstanding Dissertation Award

Year Award Winner
2023 María Celeste Wagner, "Responding to Media Coverage of Gender-Based Violence in Argentina and the United States: A Mixed Methods Study of the Intersecting Roles of Gender, Class, and Racialized Ethnicity Among General and Activist Publics"
2022 Yujin Kim, “How Language Use on Facebook Drives Affective Polarization”
2021 Jessica R. Collier, "Exposure to Misinformation on Social Media: The Role of Contextual Factors Beyond Motivated Reasoning."
2020 Emily Elizabeth Van Duyn, "Networked Silence: Political Dissent in a Digital Era" 
2019 Kaiping Chen," When People’s Voices Matter: Examining Mini-Public Deliberation and Digital Crowdsourcing with Machine Learning Tools"
2018 Shannon C. McGregor, "Social (Media) Construction of Public Opinion by Political Elites"
2017 Michael Kearney, "A Network-Based Approach to Estimating Partisanship and Analyzing Change in Polarization During the 2016 General Election"
2016 Josh Scacco, "Presidential Prediction: The Strategic Construction and Influence of Expectation Frames"
2015 Ashely Hinck, "Fan-Based Performances of Citizenship: Fandom, Public Engagement, and Politics" 
2014 Ashley Muddiman, "The instability of incivility: How news frames and citizen perceptions shape conflict in American politics" 
2013 Justin Reedy, "Political discussion and deliberative democracy in immigrant communities" 
2012 Timothy Barney, "(Re)Placing America: Cold War Mapping and the Mediation of International Space" 
2011 Mary D. Brinson, "Muslims in the media: Intercultural consequences of an Islamaphobic media system" 
2010 Leslie A. Rill, "Information, pleasure, and persuasion: How motivations function in talking politics" 
2009 Cindy Koenig Richards, "The awakening: Rhetoric and the rise of new women in the new Northwest, 1868 – 1912" 
2007 Natalie Stroud, "Selective Exposure to Partisan Information" 

Bruce E. Gronbeck Political Communication Research Award 

Year Award Winner
2016 Ned O'Gorman

Top Paper Award

Year Award Winner
2023 Chris S. Earle, "Postracial Presumptions: The Supreme Court’s Undoing of the Voting Rights Act through Racial Ignorance"
2022 Robert Hinck, Edward A. Hinck, & Shelly Schaefer Hinck, “Gender, Politeness, and the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary Debates.”
2021 Stewart M. Coles, "Evaluating the Political Relevance of Media Content: Conceptualization and Consequences."
2020 Emily Elizabeth Van Duyn, “Politics and Partnerships: Navigating Political Conflict in Cross-Cutting Romantic Relationships” 
  Jacob William Justice, “Conspiracy Theory at the Political Crossroads: Trump Campaign Rallies and the Rhetoric of Conspiracy Theory”  
  Camille Saucier, Nathan Walter, and Stephanie Edgerly, “When and Why Do People Fact-Check Partisan Information” 
  Dustin Carnahan, Daniel E. Bergan, Suhwoo Ahn, Ezgi Ulusoy, and Rachel Barry, “The Beliefs of Others: Assessing the Potential of Partisan In-Group Norms as a Strategy toward Correcting Misperceptions” 
2019 Josh Guitar, "The Snowden Ideograph: How the State Survived Snowden's Attempt to Save Democracy,", Christopher Newport University
2018 Beth Bollinger, Kevin J Calderwood, & Rico Neumann, "From Nixon to Trump: Analyzing Presidential Discourse Discussing Violence Against Women"
2017 Ignacio Moreno and Karrin Anderson, "Political Pornification Gone Global: Teresa Rodriguez as a Fungible Object in the 2015 Spanish Regional Elections"

Top Student Paper Award

Year Award Winner
2023 Logan Sean Spence, "Conspiratorial Apocalyptic Sublime: Critical Race Theory as the Sublime Object of Ideology"
2022 Abby QIN, “Staying Tuned for Censored Information Sources? A media habit approach to immigrants’ information practices.”
2021 Kristina M. Lee, "Playing Devil’s Advocate: The Satanic Temple’s Strategic Utilization of Blasphemy as a Form of Uncivil Obedience."
2020 Joseph Lawrence Flores,“The Memes to the End: Affective Labor, (Fetishistic) Political Participation, and Propaganda on behalf of a Trump National Imaginary” 
  Chelsea P. Butkowski and Samuel Wilson, “Can’t, Won’t, Don’t Vote: Networked Non-Voter Narratives During the 2016 Election”
  Mark Schmutzler, “Untying the Binds of Congress: The Competing Narratives and Binding of Congressional Speakers”
  Samuel T. Allen, “Trump’s (Non)Presidential Rhetoric and the Trump Rhetorical Presidency"
2019 Ethan Morrow, Jihye Park, and Iuliia Alieva, "Crossing Realms: The Effect of Facebook Activity on Offline Political Engagement"
2018 Wm. Bryan Paul, "The Political Hero on Display: Rethinking the American Monomyth in Madam Secretary"
2017 Lauren Fine, "The Difference of Four Years: How Students' Political Views Change During College"

Outstanding Service to the Division

Year Award Winner
2023 Ashley R. Muddiman
2022 Colene Lind
2021 Sumana Chattopadhyay
2020 Benjamin R. Warner
2019 Kevin Coe
2018 Rebekah Watson Gaidis
2017 Kristy Horn Sheeler

Top Paper Panel Recipients

Year Award Winner
2021 Christina Marie Henry & William Eveland, Jr."Express Yourself? Political Conversation, Emotion Regulation, and the Expression of Political Emotions"
  Freddie J. Jennings & Benjamin Warner"Partisan Cues, Anger, and Attitude Formation: Three Experiments on Partisan Motivated Reasoning"
  Calvin R. Coker & Joel Lansing Reed"Express Yourself?"This is a Patriotism Check: Political Economy, Corruption, and Duty to America in the 2020 Primary Debates"
2017 Soumia Bardhan, "Contextualizing Democratic Ideals into Islamic Idiom? The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's Counterpublic Dynamis in Ikhwanweb"
  Alison Novak, "Millenial Engagement Myth-Busing: Active Disengagement and the Future of Digital Politics"
 

Mitchell McKinney, Fred Jennings, Calvin Coker, and Benjamin Warner, "Tweeting Presedential Primary Debates: Debate Processing through Motivated Twitter Instruction"

Top Student Paper Panel Recipients

Year Award Winner
2021 Dakota Park-Ozee"'The Man Who Has Money is King': Discursive Constructions of Affluent Domination of U.S. Politics in Letters-to-the-Editor, 1948-2016"
  Ryan Bince "Polarizing the Populi: An Agonistic Approach to Populist Discourse"
  Sebastiaan HMH Gorissen"The Deplatforming of Donald Trump: The First Amendment and Content Moderation to Curb Anti-American Political Dissent on Social Media"
2017 Loretta Rowley, "Domesticating International Responsibilities: U.S. Gubernatorial Resistance to Obama's Syrian Refugee Resettlement Plan"
  Sohyun Choi, "Hope and Its Place in Politics"
 

Rico Neumann and Devon Geary, "Reaching Muslims from the Bully Pulpit: Analyzing Presidential Discourse on Islam and Muslims from FDR to Obama"