Dr. Jonathan Morris, with Dr. Jody Baumgartner and Robert Lichter, recently published “Negative News and Late-night Comedy about Presidential Candidates” in HUMOR. 

Abstract: “In this paper we explore the creation of jokes told on late night talk shows targeted at major party nominees for president from 1992–2008. We hypothesize that the number of jokes told about candidates are related to variations in polling numbers, mainstream media coverage, and party identification of the candidates. Our results show a positive relationship between the number of jokes told at a candidate’s expense and the amount of negative news coverage about the candidate. In addition, we find that Republicans are targeted with more frequency than Democrats. Results suggest that favorability ratings and whether or not a presidential candidate is an incumbent has no effect on the number of jokes targeting a candidate.

See https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humr.2019.32.issue-4/humor-2018-0067/humor-2018-0067.xml.

Dr. Samantha Mosier has a new article published in Politics in the Life Sciences titled “Policies as species: Viewing and classifying policy from an evolutionary biology perspective.”

“This article proposes equating policies as species to develop a better understanding of how policies emerge, change, and diffuse across policymaking environments. Scholars have long shown an interest in understanding policy change and reinvention, whether incremental or nonincremental. The two subfields of public policy that can answer how and why policies change are not unified, leading to difficulty in comprehensively assessing policy emergence and change. The policy species concept bridges knowledge of the policy process and knowledge in the policy process by creating an operationalized definition of public policy and suggesting a process for classifying policies to observe subsequent behavior. Drawing from the field of biology, the policy species framework outlines how policies possess genotypes and phenotypes, which dictate what a policy is and how it can change. In tracing genotypic and phenetic change over time, policy evolution and change is more easily discernible. In turn, a more precise picture of how policies function is painted.”

See https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-the-life-sciences/article/policies-as-species/7BF1B832C6BB839BC3C6FD5C65581288.

The Center for Survey Research issued a survey report for the July 4^th holiday entitled, “More Than Money: Happiness in the United States 243 Years After Independence.” The report generated media attention on television, radio, and in several newspapers. I appeared on the radio program, “Talk of the Town,” to discuss the results of the report. I also was a guest on radio with Patrick Johnson of WTEM in July to discuss the CSR’s findings on public opinion in North Carolina towards sports gambling legalization and the legalization of recreational marijuana use.

Below are links to some of the coverage the report received:

• (1) Yahoo! Finance (national): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/majority-americans-happy-says-ecu-160800575.html
• (2) WITN TV: https://www.witn.com/content/news/ECU-survey-finds-majority-of-Americans-are-happy-512075711.html
• (3) WNCT TV: https://www.wnct.com/local-news/new-survey-by-ecu-finds-most-americans-say-they-are-happy-in-general/
• (4) Talk of the Town (103.7 FM radio): https://soundcloud.com/innerbanksmedia/talk-of-the-town-7-2-2019-mike-lyons-dr-peter-francia
• (5) The Daily Reflector (newspaper): http://www.reflector.com/News/2019/07/05/Celebrants-find-reason-to-be-happy-on-Fourth.html
• (6) Small newspapers around the country: https://www.thewashingtondailynews.com/2019/07/01/majority-of-americans-happy-says-new-ecu-survey/; https://www.citizentribune.com/news/business/majority-of-americans-happy-says-new-ecu-survey/article_83121cc3-2b8b-591d-af90-80dc845d55c1.html

The latest report from the Life, Liberty and Happiness Project reveals that 78% of Americans agree with the statement, “I am happy in general.” As expected, one’s household financial situation is related to one’s happiness, but the survey shows other factors affect happiness such as approval of President Donald Trump’s job performance, whether one is proud to be an American, and attitudes regarding hard work and success.

Among the findings:

• Those who rate their household’s financial situation as good or excellent are more likely to report being happy than those who rate their household financial situation as fair, poor or very poor: 92% to 67%.
• Whether a person is proud to be an American also is related to happiness, even among citizens who rate their finances as fair to very poor. Among those, 70% report being happy if they are proud to be an American compared to 56% who say they are happy and do not report that they are proud to be an American.
• Approval of Trump’s job performance is associated with happiness even for those in fair to very poor financial situations, with 81% who report being happy if they approve of how Trump is doing as president. The number fell to 60% for those who disapprove of the president’s job performance.
• Among the less financially well-off, 77% report being happy if they believe that most people can succeed if they are willing to work hard. Only 53% are happy if they believe that hard work is no guarantee of success.

For more, see: https://news.ecu.edu/2019/07/01/life-liberty-and-happiness-2/

East Carolina University’s Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Staff Council hosted its third annual Staff Awards and Recognition Ceremony in the Main Campus Student Center on May 13. The event honors all THCAS staff members and recognizes the hard work they engage in on a day-to-day basis.

The council awarded DOPS’ Chatsidy Clarke with a Professional Development Grant. The awards acknowledge administrative or technical staff within the college who show exemplary professionalism and go above and beyond the requirements of their position, while the grant is awarded to a person who is actively pursuing career advancement within his or her field.

Clarke (pictured, middle, below), lead administrative support associate in the Department of Political Science since February 2016, noted, “I feel honored to have the support of the college for my professional endeavors… Having both the department and college recognize me for my efforts reinforces my confidence in my skills and potential.”

As recipient of the grant, Clarke will use her $1,200 award to attend the BRIDGES program at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“The BRIDGES program is full of prestigious women whom I would love to learn from and gain connections,” said Clarke. “My growth as an administrative professional will be strengthened by the skills obtained by this inclusive network. Through the program, I hope to gain leadership skills that will assist me as I advance my career in higher education administration.”

Social Science Quarterly recently announced that Drs. Baumgartner & Lockerbie’s “Maybe it Is More Than a Joke: Satire, Mobilization, and Political Participation” was one of the journal’s top 20 downloaded articles for the year 2018. The article can be downloaded for free until July at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ssqu.12501#.

 

Led by the efforts of Dr. Paynter, of the Department of Political Science, East Carolina University received a $1 million award from the Golden LEAF Foundation to support rural economic prosperity through innovation and entrepreneurship.

The grant, awarded on Feb. 7, will support ECU’s recently launched university-wide program focused on creating a new generation of business owners in the 29 counties of eastern North Carolina, reflective of its name RISE-29.

Read more here. 

Graduating senior, Madie Fleishman, presented her research at the Virginia Commonwealth University’s 13th Annual Politics and Government Student Research Conference this past Friday. The work titled “Humanitarian aid and its Effects on Civil Conflicts with Multiple Rebel Factions” was presented on the Peacekeeping, Genocide, and Human Rights panel with 4 other student works.

Dr. Baumgartner has lent his expertise on the vice presidency to a movement to run an independent candidate for the vice presidency. He has offered his knowledge about the office to the project in a series of videos and a FAQ. Check it out at vice.run.

For the record, Baumgartner’s involvement in the project is not an endorsement of either the candidate or the movement – although he has stated that the idea is certainly an intriguing one.