Because of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 outbreak, NCA was unable to hold the Public Program previously scheduled for April 30, 2020 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. NCA instead hosted this conversation as a podcast episode. Please visit the NCA Podcast page to listen to this episode.
In a presidential election year, a select number of states are viewed as critical players in the election's outcome. With the 2020 election approaching, NCA is focusing its spring public programming efforts on political communication, specifically in battleground states. Expert panelists will address this topic at “Communicating in the Battlegrounds: Politics in the Purple States,” an NCA public program recorded as a podcast. Panelists will discuss the use of political communication in our elections and explore the effects it has on public opinion.
Moderator
Trevor Parry-Giles, Executive Director, National Communication Association
Trevor Parry-Giles graduated from Ripon College and holds an M.A. from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D. from Indiana University. In addition to his NCA position, he is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland where he is also an affiliate faculty member with the Department of African American Studies and the Graduate School Field Committee in Film Studies.
Dr. Parry-Giles's research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary relationships between rhetoric, politics, law, and popular culture. He is the award-winning author or editor of four books and his research has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, the Journal of Communication, and elsewhere.
Dr. Parry-Giles is a Distinguished Research Fellow and a Distinguished Teaching Fellow of the Eastern Communication Association. In 2019, Parry-Giles received the University of Maryland's Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year Award.
Panelists
Suamana Chattopadhyay, Associate Professor, Marquette University
Sumana Chattopadhyay is an Associate Professor in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University. Her research interests focus on political advertising, public opinion, media use and political participation and cross-cultural media coverage of crises. She published work focusing on the 04, ’08 and ’16 U.S. presidential campaigns. She is the Chair of the National Communication Association’s Political Communication Division and Vice Chair of the Media and Diaspora working group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research.
Young Mie Kim, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Young Mie Kim is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Kim’s research concerns data-driven, algorithm-based, digitally mediated political communication. Kim testified at the Federal Election Commission‘s hearings on the rulemaking of internet communication disclaimers and presented her research at the Congressional briefings on foreign interference in elections. Kim spoke at the European Parliament on her research on data-driven political advertising and inequality in political involvement.
Robert Kraig, Executive Director, Citizen Action of Wisconsin
Robert Kraig is the Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin and is the author of several major academic articles on American political rhetoric. Kraig is a leading strategist in the Wisconsin progressive movement, and is especially known for developing innovative approaches to strategic communication and issue campaign design and implementation. He has also appeared on major national and international media outlets such as Fox News, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, several syndicated radio programs, and is a regular panelist on the PBS program International Focus.
Thomas A. Salek, Assistant Professor of Communication, Concordia University Chicago
Thomas A. Salek is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Concordia University Chicago. His research investigates presidential rhetoric, political campaigns, popular culture, and strategic responses to public controversies. Currently, he is working on a research project that outlines examples of nonpartisan rhetoric and an attitude of goodwill in the contemporary political environment.
Shawn Turner, Professor of Practice, Strategic Communication, Michigan State University
Shawn Turner is a Professor of Strategic Communication at Michigan State University, and a National Security Communication Analyst for CNN. Turner’s research interests include examining the role of disinformation in decision making related to civic engagement, and the use of persuasive communication strategies in extremist ideology.
Turner was previously the Director of Communication for U.S. National Intelligence, Assistant Press Secretary for Foreign Affairs at the National Security Council, and Deputy White House Press Secretary for National Security. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for the National Security Agency (NSA), and serves on the Executive Board of Advisors for the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
A Public Program of the National Communication Association.