Jody Baumgartner

From November 30 to December 1, 2017, Bonnie G. Mani was a member of East Carolina University’s delegation to a conference related to students’ behavioral health. Dr. Mani joined staff members from ECU’s counseling center, police department, athletic department, advising center, and Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, as well as delegations from all the other constituent universities of the University of North Carolina System, to address concerns for issues like alcohol and drug use, and suicides. The ECU delegation returned to Greenville from the Winston-Salem conference and will develop strategies to address these problems on our campus.

For the past year Dr. John Williams has been part of a select group providing comments , suggestions, and additions to a series of articles by Walter Posch, a colleague who works at the National Defense Institute in Vienna Austria. The articles focus on Middle Eastern issues, such as the politics and status of the Kurds in various countries, the changing fortunes of ISIS, the activities of Shiite militias in the region. One of the more recent ones discussed characteristics of military forces in the region, ranging from armed gangs up to government troops.

Boston Terrier Sophia Saint Rocco Mani and Department of Political Science Professor Bonnie G. Mani participated in the program that brings therapy dogs to Joyner Library to help reduce stress levels of students studying for final examinations.

Many thanks to Dr. Mani!

Dr. Peter Francia, along with Dr. Jonathan Morris, also recently completed and co-authored a study on fake news entitled, “A Fake News Inoculation? Fact Checkers, Partisan Identification, and the Power of Misinformation,” which, using an experimental design, found that fact-checking efforts to correct public misperceptions driven by fake news stories appear to have little impact. Instead, the results show individuals are more likely to accept or reject misinformation based on whether or not it is consistent with their pre-existing partisan and ideological beliefs.

Armin Krishnan will be participating in the Chancellor’s Leadership Academy (CLA) in Spring 2018. The CLA was established in 2004 with the intention of expanding the leadership capabilities of high-potential members of the university and to enhance their contribution to the institution by teaching them leadership skills. Every year ten individuals are selected for the CLA. The program consists of ten sessions that cover key aspects of leadership in higher education. Participants are also expected to work on and complete a community project during the Spring term.

Dr. Peter Francia served as chair and discussant on the roundtable panel, “Partisanship in the Age of Trump: New Era or More of the Same,” at the Northeastern Political Science Association’s annual conference (November 9-11). Francia discussed results from a nationwide survey done by ECU’s Center for Survey Research, which showed that the public’s ability to answer questions correctly about recent current events is heavily influenced by their feelings toward President Trump. Large and statistically significant differences existed on nearly all items ranging from topic areas covering the 2016 election, the stock market and the economy, crime, health care, and science.

Dr. Jody Baumgartner was featured in a front-page story about the local Greenville NC elections on Sunday, November 19, 2017. “Expert: Money had limited impact on city election” By Seth Thomas Gulledge (The Daily Reflector).

http://www.reflector.com/News/2017/11/19/Election-Bill.html

Dr. Peter Francia has published an article titled “Free Media and Twitter in the 2016 Presidential Election: The Unconventional Campaign of Donald Trump” in Social Science Computer Review.

The article “examines the surprising outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump defy nearly all of the conventional wisdom to become the 45th president of the United States. Political commentators and experts offered several immediate postelection explanations for Trump’s victory, one of which focused on how Trump was able to generate considerable unpaid or free media for himself, often directly through Twitter. This article explains the theory and rationale underlying the free media thesis (FMT) and then examines whether there is any preliminary empirical support for it. Using media tracking data and public opinion surveys, the results reveal that Trump indeed dominated the unpaid media market. Although the findings in this article cannot make causal claims about whether Trump’s advantages in free media are the primary reason for his upset victory, the results, nonetheless, suggest that some of the basic conditions necessary for the FMT were present in the 2016 election and that the FMT offers a plausible avenue for further analysis and future research.”

See https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439317730302

Chapter proposals are being accepted for inclusion in the book “Building a Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure for Long-Term Economic Growth”, edited by Olga Smirnova and scheduled to be published by IGI Global.

The book will examine contemporary transportation issues through the lens of various modes of transportation (aviation and airports, inland and short sea shipping, public transit and more) while also focusing on the importance of sustainability, urban planning, and funding. All chapters will provide managerial and policy focus to contemporary transportation issues. Possible topics might include sustainability and climate change, public management and planning, financing of transportation infrastructure, and revenue and spending issues facing modern transportation infrastructure in the US for a wide variety of modes.

See https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/3043 for details.

Proposals and other inquiries should be sent to Olga Smirnova, at smirnovao@ecu.edu. The deadline for submission is November 30th, 2017.

ECU’s Model United Nations Club competed in their first national competition in Washington DC serving as delegates from Poland. Students Mariama Abubakri, Haley Creef (MUN Club President), Dylan Fulp, Zachary Hollopeter, Andrew McLeer (MUN Club Vice President), Gabriela Morales, Aji Njie, Kaitlyn Rose, Sorrell Saunders, and Braxton Smallwood engaged in debate and competition with over 60 other universities, including delegations from Nigeria, Italy, Japan, China, and France, representing a total of 87 countries. ECU MUN students earned a conference-wide delegation award after three days of tackling diverse and complex global problems ranging from the illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons to improving housing and food security for urban refugees.