Awards and Honors from ICA’s 2020 Annual Conference

Twenty-one faculty and students were recognized for their work.

By Ashton Yount

From May 20-26, more than 45 students and faculty from the Annenberg School for Communication presented at the International Communication Association’s 70th Annual Conference, held virtually this year.

Dean John L. Jackson, Jr. and Professors Marwan M. Kraidy, Monroe Price, and Guobin Yang received a major honor at the conference as they were inducted as ICA Fellows. Fellows status in ICA is a recognition of scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication. This year’s inductees bring the total number of Annenberg faculty members who are ICA Fellows to 12. The others include Joseph N. Cappella, Michael X. Delli Carpini, Robert C. Hornik, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Elihu Katz, Klaus Krippendorff, Joseph Turow, and Barbie Zelizer.

Along with her coauthors, Professor Sarah J. Jackson received the ICA Applied Research Award — another of the conference’s biggest honors — for her book #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. The award committee praised Jackson and her collaborators for producing outstanding and impactful research on the ways in which marginalized groups have reappropriated social media as a tool for shaping mainstream media and public discourse about issues of race and gender.

Alum Sijia Yang (Ph.D. ’19) won the Abby Prestin Dissertation of the Year Award from the ICA and NCA Health Communication Divisions for “Morality in Tobacco Control Messaging: Effects of Moral Appeals on Persuasion and Retransmission.”

The following Annenberg students and faculty received top paper or poster awards at the conference:

  • Doctoral Student Mia Jovanova, Professor David Lydon-Staley, Research Assistant Professor Matthew Brook O'Donnell, Doctoral Candidate Prateekshit Pandey, Doctoral Student Jacob Parelman, Research Director Yoona Kang, and Professor Emily Falk won a top paper award from the Communication Science and Biology Division for “Default Mode and Salience Brain Network Integration During Messaging Predicts Health Behavior Change.”
  • Professor Guobin Yang won a top paper award from the Communication History Division for “Media Memories and Media Generations: The Case of China’s Internet Bar Generation.”
  • Postdoctoral Fellow Elisabetta Ferrari won the best paper award from the Activism, Communication, and Social Justice Interest Group for “"Visual Focus Groups: Stimulating Reflexive Conversations with Collective Drawing."
  • Doctoral Student Lauren Bridges won a top three student paper award from the Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division for “Identity Resolution, Digital Failure, and Queer Data.”
  • Doctoral Student Ava Kikut received a top four paper award from the Health Communication Division for “Learning from the Perspectives of African American Participants: Assessing How a Recruitment Campaign Motivated Participation in a Genetic Research Study.”
  • Doctoral Student Sophie Maddocks won a top student paper award from the Feminist Scholarship Division for "A Feminist Intervention in All But Name:  Combating Non-Consensual Pornography in the U.S."
  • Doctoral Candidate Muira McCammon received a top student paper award from the Journalism Studies Division for “Predictive Witnessing: Military Bases and the Politics of Journalistic Access.”
  • Doctoral Candidate Hanna E. Morris won a top student paper award from the Environmental Communication Division for “Fearing the Millennial Other: United States Press Coverage of the Green New Deal.”
  • Doctoral Candidate Revati Prasad won a top student paper award from the Global Communication Division for “For Growth, for Glory, for Governance: Understanding Connectivity Efforts in Andhra Pradesh.”
  • Doctoral Student Jeanna Sybert received a top student paper award from the Communication and Technology Division for “The Demise of #NSFW: Censorship, Resistance, and Tumblr’s 2018 Adult Content Ban.”
  • Alum Caty Borum-Chattoo (M.A.C. ‘98), Doctoral Candidate Lori Young, and Alum David Conrad (Ph.D. ’18) received a top poster award from the Journalism Studies Division for “’The Rent Is Too Damn High’: Housing Security and Homelessness Portrayals in U.S. Print News Coverage.”

Congratulations to all the winners of 2020 ICA awards!