SMPA is a pioneering teaching and research leader. Professor Silvio Waisbord is Editor of the International Journal of Press/Politics, an interdisciplinary journal for the analysis and discussion of the role of the press and politics in a globalized world.
Gain access to countless career opportunities
Students at our annual Communications Career Expo network with a CNN recruiter. SMPA helps students pursue rewarding careers in media, journalism, and communications via internships, networking events, and employment workshops.
Collaborate with faculty on research and special projects
Graduate student Rachel Weisel and Professor Kimberly Gross, in partnership with the Project for Excellence in Journalism, studied how the media uses Twitter. Their findings were published in a groundbreaking report that garnered national press coverage.
World-class speakers and events provide invaluable perspective
Students line up outside GW's Lisner Auditorium before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates speak at an event hosted by SMPA. The event was broadcast on CNN.
Learn and operate industry-standard broadcasting equipment and software
SMPA Faculty and staff use the flash studio for live and recorded professional programming.
World-class speakers and events provide invaluable perspective
Longtime political reporter and broadcaster Gwen Ifill of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer addresses students.
World-class speakers and events provide invaluable perspective
CNN's Christiane Amanpour and SMPA Director Frank Sesno interview five former U.S. Secretaries of State, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Warren Christopher, Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III. The free event was sponsored by SMPA.
Study media in heart of Washington, and the world
SMPA is home to Prime Movers Media, an organization that sends student interns and media professionals to public high schools in Washington, D.C. to teach journalism.
In a Democracy Seminar at Harvard's Kennedy School last week, Professor Dave Karpf highlighted some of the key findings and research on the "MoveOn Effect" in American politics. Highlighting the idea that online politics is neither limited to "clicktivism" nor comprised of "organizing without organizations," Karpf presented evidence the new media environment has given rise to a new generation of political advocacy groups that have redefined membership and fundraising regimes.
GW's School of Media and Public Affairs in association with
the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) presents...
Scandal and Silence
When the Watchdog Doesn't Bark
A Debate and Discussion with Robert Entman, J.B. and M.C. Shapiro
Professor of Media and Public Affairs
AND
Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News Egil "Bud" Krogh, Former Nixon Staffer & Senior Fellow, CSPC Mara Liasson, National Political Correspondent, NPR Frank Sesno, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, moderator
The conventional wisdom holds that media crave and actively pursue scandals whenever they sense corruption, keeping politicians honest, or at least fearful of being exposed. Dr. Entman's book Scandal and Silence argues instead that:
Media neglect most corruption, providing too little, not too much scandal coverage.
Feeding frenzies are the exception, not the rule.
It's not the media but governments and political parties that drive the scandal process and any excesses that occur.
Cover-ups and lying often work, and truth remains essentially unrecorded, unremembered.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
7:00 PM
Jack Morton Auditorium
The George Washington University
801 21st Street NW
Washington, DC 20052
In an effort to provide journalists with the best practices to avoid perpetuating racial stereotypes of African-Americans, the Foundation to Promote Open Society and the Open Society Institute's Campaign for Black Male Achievement awarded a $50,000 grant to SMPA professors Robert Entman and Kimberly Gross along with Andrew Rojecki and Carole Bell.
The grant will fund research and a major public event next year that examines racial appeals and the role of race in the 2012 presidential election with a particular focus on how the news media covered race.
"My colleagues and I are exploring the subtle appeals to some voters' prejudices that have replaced crude, obviously racist messages in politicians' toolkits. Through experiments and close analysis of media images, we'll figure out how to sensitize journalists and citizens to coded racial communications--which we hope will discourage politicians from using such tactics," said Entman.
More details on the research and event are forthcoming.
Professor Steven Livingston gave a lecture today at Addis Ababa University on technology and the Arab Spring.
He spoke about a chapter on which he and Professor Dave Karpf have collaborated for inclusion in a book on the Arab Spring. The students were assigned a draft copy of the chapter for their reading this week.
The professor of the class, Lucas Robinson, is a 2003 SMPA master's program graduate and is completing his PhD at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His spouse is a British diplomat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
On October 25, professors Catie Bailard, Matt Hindman and Steven Livingston spoke at the National Democratic Institute on their analysis of the open-source event mapping platform, Ushahidi Crowdmap.
In collaboration with InterNews, a Washington-based NGO that pursues media development initiatives around the world, Bailard, Hindman, Livingston and SMPA professor Nikki Usher analyzed almost 13,000 Crowdmap deployments over 2010-2011. Crowdmap allows users to plot events to a digital map so that the information can be used in a way somewhat similar to the way they would use information provided by conventional news media coverage. The key difference is found in the self-generated nature of crowdsourced information platforms such as Ushahidi. It is perhaps best thought of as News 2.0.
For example, in the aftermath of a natural disaster Crowdmap allows victims to text in reports of their location and condition. In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, thousands of such reports, all displayed on an Ushahidi digital map, helped responders in their efforts to get much needed aid and medicine to victims of the disaster. In the language of the SMPA study, information and communication technology lowers collaboration costs and facilitates collective action initiatives in a wide variety of circumstances, including disaster response. Ushahidi means witness or testimony in Swahili. Crowdmap is a hosted version of the Ushahiidi software. The SMPA/InterNews report will be published soon, so stay tuned for more information.
Professor Steven Livingston is speaking about "New Organizational Forms in Transnational Collective Action and Advocacy" on Thursday, October 18 at the Maxwell Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University. He has also given invited talks at American University and at Drexel University, all in the last two weeks. Last evening, Livingston gave an Ignite Talk at the World Bank/International Crisis Mappers conference. Video of the Ignite Talk will be available in coming weeks.
Livingston also has a new publication on information technologies, which can be found here.
The prestigious International Journal of Communication has selected a scholarly article written by SMPA Professor Nikki Usher for publication in its latest volume. The piece, “Going Web-First at The Christian Science Monitor: A Three-Part Study of Change,” documents her field study of The Christian Science Monitor’stransition to a web-only publication after the discontinuation of its century-old print daily in 2009.
According to the findings of the study, the conversion to an online-only publication caused unwelcome consequences for journalists at The Monitor, who felt news production had become unduly focused on internet traffic and economic viability at the expense of journalistic quality.
“Journalist felt that deep, analytical stories were pushed aside in favor of quick-hit traffic pleasers and those that responded to breaking news. The lingering question for The Monitor, then, seems to be how to protect its journalistic values in a 24/7 Web world,” writes Usher.
Usher concludes that the eventual web traffic successes of The Monitor—25 million page views per month—came at the expense of its identity as a “thoughtful” paper, a phenomenon that can serve as a cautionary tale for other publications considering the move to online-only journalism.
SMPA Assistant Professor Catie Bailard recently published articles in two scholarly journals. Both articles reflect her primary academic focus: the intersection of politics and information and communication technologies.
Published in the Journal of Communication, Bailard's first article, “A Field Experiment on the Internet’s Effect in an African Election: Savvier Citizens, Disaffected Voters, or Both,” explores a field experiment she conducted in Tanzania during its 2010 presidential election to determine whether Internet use influenced a person's perceptions of election fairness. Not only did her findings reveal that the Internet negatively influenced these perceptions, but the study also found that, in this case, more critical Internet users became less likely to vote at all.
Her second article, “Testing the Internet’s Effect on Democratic Satisfaction: A Multi-Methodological, Cross-National Approach,” appears in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics. The article presents the results from a field experiment she conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina testing the relationship between Internet use and satisfaction with how democracy functions in the countries. The findings of the study demonstrate the Internet has a considerable influence on democratic satisfaction. Whereas the Internet leads to enhanced satisfaction in strong democracies, it is associated with dissatisfaction in countries with weak democratic practices.
April 30, 2012: To celebrate the release of The Handbook of Global Health Communication, contributing authors and global health experts gathered in the Marvin Center for a panel discussion to examine the latest global health communication research and practices. The Handbook, which was co-edited by SMPA Professor Silvio Waisbord and Rafael Obregon of UNICEF, offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the role of communication processes in global public health, development, and social change. Panelists included Professor Waisbord, Douglas Storey of Johns Hopkins, GW Professor Doug Evans, Johns Hopkins PhD candidate Kerry Scott, Julie Pulerwitz of PATH, Gregory Pirio of Empowering Communicaions, and Elizabeth Fox of USAID. A video of the panel discussion can be found below.
Watch below as SMPA Professor Silvio Waisbord discusses The Handbook of Global Health Communication, which he co-edited with Rafael Obregon of UNICEF. The book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the role of communication processes in global public health, development, and social change.
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In an effort to provide journalists with the best practices to avoid perpetuating racial stereotypes of African-Americans, the Foundation to Promote Open Society and the 
