Communication - February, 2005
from Jerry Baldasty, chair

[Download a Microsoft Word version of the February, 2005 "Communication"]

Research

Schneider, Steven M. & Foot, Kirsten A. (2005). Web Sphere Analysis: An Approach to Studying Online Action. In Christine Hine (Ed.), Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Schneider, Steven M. & Foot, Kirsten A. (2004). The Web as an Object of Study. New Media and Society, 6(1), 114-122.

Siegl, Erica, & Foot, Kirsten A. (2004). Expression in the Post-September 11th Web Sphere. Electronic Journal of Communication, 14(1 & 2). (This publication grew out of a paper Erica wrote in a graduate seminar on Internet research.)

Lisa Coutu, book review in Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2004, vol. 8, pp. 601-604. on Thiesmeyer, Lynn (Ed.) (2003). Discourse and Silencing: Representation and The Language of Displacement (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Philipsen, G. and Coutu, L. M. (2005). The Ethnography of Speaking. In K. L. Fitch & R. E. Sanders, (Eds.). Handbook of language and social interaction (pp. 355-379). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Freisem, K. & Coutu, L. M. (forthcoming). Aligning in Large Class Instruction. In D. Wulff (Ed.). Aligning for learning: Strategies for teaching effectiveness. Boston, MA: Anker Press.

Philipsen, G., Coutu, L. M., and Covarrubias, P. (2004) Speech Codes Theory: Restatement, Revisions, and Response to Criticisms. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.) Theorizing About Intercultural Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

B. Warnick (in press). "Looking to the future: Electronic texts and the deepening interface." Technical Communication Quarterly.

Howard, Philip N. "Deep Democracy, Thin Citizenship: The Impact of Digital Media in Political Campaign Strategy." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 597, no. 1 (2005): 153-70.

Fearn Banks, Kathleen. The Historical Dictionary of African-American Television. Scarecrow Press, a division of Rowman and Littlefield.

Kathleen Fearn Banks and Pattijean Hooper, editors, a special crisis communication issue of The Journal of Promotional Management

Gastil, J., & Wilkerson, J. (2005). Project funding from the University of Washington Technology Gap Innovation Fund to adapt Election Day and LegSim for the Advanced Placement high school classroom ($49,986).

John Stewart, Karen E. Zediker and Saskia Witteborn, TOGETHER: Communicating Interpersonally: A Social Construction Approach (Sixth Edition 2005)

Lynne M. Baab, Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest. InterVarsity Press.

Black, L. W. (in press). Building connection while thinking together: By-products of Employee Training in Dialogue. Western Journal of Communication.

Gill, K.E. “The Race of the Web Sites: 2004.” ACM Interactions, Oct-December 2004.

Western States Communication Association

McGarrity, Matt. (2005 February) "A Critical Analysis Of Public Speaking Criticism." This is a top competitive paper in the Communication and Instruction Division.

Manusov, V., & Milstein, T. (2005 February). “Opposition in Israeli media: Reflections of multiple cultural identities in coverage of the Rabin-Arafat handshake.”

Valerie is also participating in two programs for ORWAC (Organization for Women and Communication) at Western States. Valerie will be talking about writing empirical articles and getting published. This is a mentoring session aimed at students/new faculty. One of Valerie’s undergraduate honors students from 2003-4, Tiffany Lewis, submitted her thesis, and the paper won the top debut paper for the Interpersonal Division.

Ceccarelli, L. (2005 February). "A Hard Look at Ourselves: A Reception Study of Rhetoric of Science."

Lisa Coutu is co-facilitating a workshop entitled, “Negotiating the ‘Third Space’ of Online Instruction. She is also a respondent to four papers on a panel about ethnographic perspectives and a delegate at large to the legislative assembly.

Save the Date

Wednesday, February 16.
3:30 p.m.
Communications 206.
Reception to Follow.
Please join David Domke for a presentation and discussion of his recent study, God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press.

Sunday, February 20
The Department of Communication is a co-sponsor for a public talk by Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who has been reporting in Iraq. He will be speaking on the situation in Iraq and also on the journalism there, on Sunday, February 20, at 7:30 pm in Kane Hall 120. Jamail will meet with Communication students on Friday, February 18, at noon (in Communications 126). The talk is sponsored by the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq (INOC), the University of Washington's Department of Communication, and the Iraqi Community Center of Seattle (ICCS).

Wednesday, March 2
The UW Graduate School’s GO-MAP program will hold its annual UW Graduate
Diversity Fellows Dinner on Wednesday, March 2. The event begins with a social hour at 6 pm, followed by dinner and a speaker – bell hooks.

April 13
Please plan to join our dean and representatives of the DART Foundation for a celebration of the new Dart Professorship of Communication. The event will run from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Walker Ames Room (Kane Hall). The College will sponsor this event --- and specifically invites Communication faculty to attend. Please plan to do so.

April 15
The Dart Center will present the 12th annual Dart Award for Excellence in Reporting on Victims of Violence on campus. The award ceremony will follow a full-day conference exploring lessons learned for journalists in the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami, and identify the next steps in covering the social, political and economic fallout of the disaster.

May 14
Crowell Fund Run
Green Lake
time TBA

May 26
Scholarship Awards Ceremony
University of Washington club

June 10
Graduation Celebration
HUB Ballroom
12:30 to 3:00
(keynote by distinguished alumna, Assunta Ng).

Distinguished Alumna: Assunta Ng

Each year, the Department of Communication honors one of its distinguished alumni at our annual graduation celebration. This year, we will honor Assunta Ng, founder and publisher of the Chinese Post and the Northwest Asian Weekly. She received her B.A. in International Studies at UW and her M.A. in Speech Communication. She has long been a mentor to young people in our community. She has raised funds for scholarships, spoken to our students at classes and other gatherings, and has demonstrated a genuine concern for developing leadership among young people. The Chinese Post and Northwest Asian Weekly are pillars of the Asian American community, as is the Northwest Asian Weekly Foundation – which promotes scholarships and mentorship for young people. Assunta Ng was a member of our inaugural Communication Alumni Hall of Fame cohort in 2004.

We honor her for her many contributions to the community, for her remarkable leadership, and her dedication to public service. She will give the keynote address at the department’s graduation celebration on June 10. Please plan to attend.

In 2003, we honored Norman Rice, a long-time civic leader (as city council member, mayor, bank president) and in 2004, we honored Christine Gregoire, also a long-time public leader (as state attorney general).

Hall of Fame, Friends of Communication – Nominations still open

Nominations are still open (until March 1) for the 2005-6 cohort for the Communication Alumni Hall of Fame. We are also starting a second award to recognize those who have supported the department who are not alumni. Nominations are solicited for Friends of Communication, to honor individuals who have provided substantial support to the current Department of Communication or its predecessors. Please send your nominations to Victoria Sprang (vsprang@u.washington.edu). We will honor both the Hall of Fame members and Friends of Communication at our next Alumni Open House in October.

People

Robert Gottlieb, former Editor in Chief of Simon and Schuster and the New Yorker reviewed Tony Chan’s book, Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, 1905-1961, for the New York Review of Books, January 13, 2005, Volume LII, Number 1, pp. 40, 41. Tony will also talk about the book and the film, Piccadilly, at the Paramount Theater, February 28, 2005.

Valerie Manusov has been working with two other colleagues at the University of Connecticut and the University of Minnesota to develop a new division – on nonverbal Communication – for the National Communication Association. NCA approved the proposal; Valerie was elected vice chair of the new division.

The Think Tank is an informal social gathering of communication faculty and graduate students interested in critical perspectives in communication. The goal is to create a social space for the emergence of a critical-perspectives community, one crossing disciplinary boundaries. The group meets Thursday evenings. Please contact Deborah Kaplan or Crispin Thurlow for more information.

Giorgia Aiello has been named a Huckabay Fellow by the UW Graduate School. She will develop a new course (“ Theoretical & Methodological Approaches to Visual Communication”) while working with mentors in the department. There were just eight Huckabays awarded this year. Congratulations, Giorgia.

Danielle Endres has accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. She'll be an Assistant Professor at a university that has a good reputation for educating PhD students in the area of rhetoric. Congratulations.

Jay Leighter has accepted a position as an assistant professor of Communication at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Jay will create and teach a curriculum emphasizing the ethnography of communication. Congratulations.

Nika Pelc took a course for UW network administrators on Windows 2003 Server security, administration, software updates, server roles, client updates and Windows XP. Nika reports that during the second week of February, there were more than 30 student equipment reservations, constituting high use of all media gear. On an average day, every single camera was checked out to students.

Maria L. Gonzalez, a 2003 Communication alumna, recently was promoted to Project Manager for the UW Annual Giving Direct Mail Program.

Emeritus Professor Bill Shadel died recently; he was 96. Shadel, who taught in the School of Communciations from 1963 to 1975, was a broadcasting pioneer who covered D-Day for CBS and moderated a 1960 televised presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. See the Communication web page for further details.

Local television station KOMO 4 recently featured a special item on Kyle Charvat, a Communication student. For several years, Kyle has been battling an aggressive brain tumor. Now faced with the need to raise $100,000 for a radical new treatment option in Houston, he has the help of his fraternity – which has started a fund raising campaign for him. For more information, please see the Communication web page.

The iSchool Diversity Committee sponsored a screening of "Half of Anything," a documentary by UW filmmaker Jonathan Tomhave on February 1. The film examines the construction of Native American identity through four personal narratives.

Richard Kielbowicz is on sabbatical during 2005, working on a book, Electrifying News! The Telegraph in American Journalism. It takes a broad look at how a key innovation in communication technology, the first to use electricity, altered the basis for gathering news and ultimately affected the nature of public information purveyed to society. Chapters will examine telegraphy’s impact on the business of news, news writing and values (especially timeliness), the occupational routines of news workers, the geography of news, laws governing news, and more. Each of these areas of interest will be fleshed out through small case studies of how telegraphy figured in reporting politics, business, sports, and wars.

Lisa Coutu is directing the 2005 Large Class Collegium to be held in April at Pack Forest and was one of the opening panel participants for the first Catalyst Sparks sessions (open to all University faculty) on Friday, January 21. Kirsten Foot was in one of the breakout sessions.

Crispin Thurlow has recently been appointed Associate Research Fellow in the internationally renowned Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University - one the UK's leading research institutions. This five-year appointment is intended to recognize his "close working relationship" and the "mutual benefits of ongoing collaboration" with faculty in the Centre. At the beginning of November, during a research trip to Cardiff, Crispin gave a guest lecture to undergraduate students and, for the Cardiff Language & Communication Seminar series, presented a formal paper titled: "The alchemy of the upwardly mobile: Global travel and the stylization of elite identities." This presentation arises from his collaborative research on Language and Global Communication with Dr. Adam Jaworski at Cardiff University.

Students in the MC Digital Media program, during Winter and Spring quarters, are collaborating with students from Tsinghua University, China, and Donseo University, South Korea, as part of "Tale Spin," an online, interactive game and a film. Students from the three universities will form a team to interpret the narrative, The Descent to the Underworld. This narrative involves a search for someone who has been kidnapped (or a valuable object which has been stolen) by a spirit or king of the underworld; the game genre is fantasy or dream-world. Each team (there are four) will produce 20 media clips, each running about 10 seconds; clips can be Flash, animation, digital video. Teams will collaborate using Internet2 (Abilene). A player will be able to see different cultural interpretations of the same story. The live game will be played online the week of 3 May 2005. Participating universities include, in the US: Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Louisiana State University, Northwestern University, University of Utah, and UW. Other participating universities: The School of Art, Culture and Communication, Malmo, Sweden; FAMU Center for AV Studies, Prague, The Czech Republic; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), Sao Leopoldo, Brazil; and Donseo University, South Korea.

Andrew Waits, one of our undergraduate students, has been named a Mary Gates Scholar for his work on the US & cross-national election Web sphere projects in the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement. Kirsten Foot co-directs these projects and is directing his honors thesis on online deliberation.

In Phil Howard’s autumn quarter class, an investigative team of undergraduate researchers tracked the communication strategies of the major candidate campaigns, and reported on creative uses of technology by citizens. The undergraduate students received course credits for their work, but the class was run more like a newsroom than a lecture hall, with the goal of service education and public scholarship. The team sought to write accessible reports for the public, but developed a specific media strategy to get their findings into the hands of interested journalists. By the end of the campaign season, the team's research had been cited and several team members interviewed in regional and national print, television, radio, and online media.

Important news blogs (Adam Curry, Scienceblog), regional news media (Komo1000 Radio, Kiro7 news, NPR affiliate, King5, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Tacoma News Tribune) and national news media (USAToday) covered the research. They interviewed team members and cited the team’s investigative reports, such as the working paper about error and victory in close races, 'Within The Margins. This paper now appears as Working Paper #2005-1 of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at the University of Washington

David Domke has been speaking about his book (“God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing Press) and related topics in recent months. Since the presidential election, he has written op-ed pieces for: Seattle Times, Counterpunch.org, Tacoma News Tribune, Madison Capital Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Detroit Free Press, beliefnet.com, therevealer.org. Since the presidential election, he has done media interviews with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, USA Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, Riverside Press-Enterprise, Fox News TV, CNN International TV, and radio stations in Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, Olympia WA, Bradenton and Tampa FL, Santa Fe NM, New York City, Columbia SC, Minneapolis MN, Indianapolis, Tucson AZ, Albany NY, Chicago, San Luis Obispo CA, Los Angeles. He was a featured author on "Book Lust," a half-hour book program hosted by former Seattle City librarian Nancy Pearl that airs (many, many times) on Seattle Community Television. He also gave a talk at Seattle Pacific University on January 26, "The God Strategy."

The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement has just received funding from the Norcliffe Foundation to continue its civic education program next year. CCCE also received a gift from Microsoft to continue developing initiatives in technology and public life. Lance Bennett has been serving on the Annenberg National Commission on the Press, and recently finished a report on the state of watchdog journalism in the US.

Jerry Baldasty is serving on the UW’s Provost Search Committee. He recently chaired a journalism accreditation site visit to the Department of Mass Communications at St. Cloud State University (Minnesota) and will also visit Bowling Green State University (Ohio) for an accreditation review. He also spoke about academic conferences – and how to get the most out of them -- on January 26 at a GO-MAP (Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program) mentor lunch for graduate students. Jerry Baldasty and Jan Ames (chair of our Visiting Committee) represented the department at the Asian American Journalists Association annual Lunar Banquet on February 12. Also attending the event were numerous Communication alumni, including Steve Maynard, Michael Ko, Assunta Ng and Chris Nishiwaki. Caroline Li and Mona Concepcion, both current Communication students, also attended.

Many thanks to Patricia Moy and Patty Fortine for their work in compiling our diversity report for GO-MAP (Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program).

The University’s Distinguished Teaching Awards committee asked the department for more information on two nominees this year – Nancy Rivenburgh, for the Distinguished Teaching Award, and Natalie Debray, for the Excellence in Teaching Award. The former is for faculty, the latter for teaching assistants.

Alumni, Campus visitors

A group of alumni and friends of the Department met January 24 to work on organizing a Communication alumni group. Attending were: Jan Ames, Megan Coppersmith, Pat Foote, Kathleen Miller, Peter Rinearson, Carol Vu and Stuart Elway. Karen Demorest, from the UW Alumni Association, Jerry Baldasty and Victoria Sprang met with them. The group is planning an alumni event for Friday, April 22.

The Department of Communication hosted a “Better Watchdog Workshop” December 4-5 on campus. The workshops were sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Bremerton Sun, the SeattleTimes and the Oregonian.

Matt Kelley, Founder/President of the MAVIN Foundation visited campus February 11. MAVIN is the nation's leading organization that celebrates and advocates for mixed race people and families to create a cohesive, multicultural society. The Department is working with Matt and MAVIN to help launch the Generation MIX National Awareness Tour. There will a campus-wide kick-off on April 4.

The Generation MIX National Awareness Tour will feature a team of five participants, traveling over 8,000 miles, stopping at sixteen college campuses across the U.S., working with multiracial and multicultural organizations, and all in a 26 foot RV. The goal is to jumpstart a national dialogue about how multiracial youth are changing the face of America. The tour’s goals are to increase awareness of the mixed race community, increase awareness of the growing body of resources to help people understand the mixed race experience, and to initiate a national dialogue about mixed race people and families. MAVIN was profiled recently in the Seattle Times in an article (“Race isn't as clear as black and white”) written by Times staffer Florangela Davila (who is also teaching a journalism course this quarter for the Department of Communication). The article can be found here.

See the department’s web page for new profiles of some of our alumni – including Dane Narbaitz, who recently joined Long Shadows Vintners as Vice President, Sales and Marketing. Long Shadows, led by former Chateau Ste. Michelle CEO Allen Shoup, is a consortium of ultra-premium wineries established in 2003.

Other alumni visitors include:

Peter Chiarelli, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Executive;
Grant Degginger, local attorney and public official (Partner, Lane Powell Spears Lubersky LLP; Councilmember, City of Bellevue: 1999 – Present);
Devon O'Brien, owner of an academic advising company (Destination College & Beyond).
Terry Tazioli, travel editor, Seattle Times. Terry visited Karen Rathe’s Community Journalism: News Lab class.

As part of our Mentor Lunch program, Chiarelli, Degginger, O’Brien and Tazioli met with students to advise them on developing strategies for careers.

Other recent visitors to campus include Jean Godden, Seattle City Council member, who spoke February 15 at Karen Rathe’s class, Community Journalism: News Lab.

At the February 1 PRSSA meeting, alumni Lucas Welch and Lucas Mack spoke to students. Welch is a junior associate in public relations with Shepardson, Stern + Kaminsky. Mack is an audience coordinator for Northwest Afternoon on KOMO 4.

Dr. Richard Meyer, former CEO of KCTS-TV, WAMU-FM and the North Texas Public Broadcasting in Dallas as well as a scholar of Chinese silent films, visited Tony Chan's Globalization, Media and Culture seminar in regional communications (CMU 561) during autumn quarter. Dr. Meyer was the Edmund F. and Virginia B. Ball Professor of Telecommunications (and endowed chair) at Ball State University. Before that he was Fulbright scholar at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He received is B.A. and M.A. degrees from Stanford and his Ph.D. from New York University.

Deborah Horne, a KIRO 7 reporter, recently visited Tony Chan’s digital journalism class. Other guest speakers include alum Dan Lamont (February 23), a photojournalist and Jim Simon (February 28), a Seattle Times reporter, and Sulaika Lavasseur, a CBC journalist (March 2).

Career Workshop

Five PR professionals spoke to UW communication students about careers in public relations at a Career Workshop January 27. Our thanks go to all the participants, and particularly to alumna Kathleen Miller and AWC student chapter officer Cristina Brendicke, who coordinated the event. In addition to Miller, the speakers included: Valerie O’Neil, Senior Director of public relations and community relations for the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics and the WNBA's Seattle Storm; Sally Farhat, Director of public relations and business development at Sweetgrass, a Northwest advertising and branding agency; Jacque Coe, Public Relations Manager for Washington's Lottery, and Lucas Welch, a junior associate in public relations with Shepardson, Stern + Kaminsky. For more details and pictures, please click here. Thanks to Victoria Sprang for her help in organizing the event. Farhat and Welch are both UW Communication alumni.

Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

In late December and early January, the Dart Center focused on providing resources to journalists covering the tsunamis and devastation in Southeast Asia. Dart resources were cited by a number of media advocacy programs, including poynter.org, the International Center for Journalists, and CNN Student News. Especially noteworthy and vitally important were the efforts of the Dart team in Australia, led by Cait McMahon, Trina McLellan and Philip Castle. Dart will continue to focus on this tragedy, considering the long-term needs of journalists covering the story.

[Download a Microsoft Word version of the February, 2005 "Communication"]