The NCA 2000 Summer Conference, Communicating Politics: Engaging the Public in Campaign 2000 and Beyond, takes place June 21 - 24 at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It is co-sponsored by National Communication Association, the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University, and the Political Communication Center at the University of Oklahoma.
The conference is not organized around traditional panels and papers. Instead 125 participants will be invited to submit brief position papers to be distributed in advance, and sessions will be plenary panel discussions, in which a moderator will pose questions based on the papers.
Each plenary sessions will take one of the following themes:
Communicating the Importance of Civic Participation: The Declining American Experience
Communicating Politics Through the Media: What's Wrong and How Can We Fix It?
Communicating Politics through Debates: Enhancing Citizen Involvement
Communicating Candidate Messages with the Public: Political Advertising and the Internet
Communicating Politics Beyond the 2000 Election: Diverse Messages to Diverse Constituencies
The panelists will meet after the plenary sessions to formulate action plans. All action plans will then be summarized and discussed on the last day of the conference and a position paper drafted for general distrubution.
Scholars will be joined by practitioners and guest speakers including Janet Brown, executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates; Julia Cohen, director of Youth Vote 2000; Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate; Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, national president of the League of Women Voters; Nancy Kegan Smith of the National Archives Office of Presidential Libraries, and Ed Goeas, president of the Tarrance Group, a national polling firm. Robert Putnam, of Harvard University, is the invited keynote speaker.
Special Events
The conference opens with an afternoon reception June 21 in the U.S. Capitol,
hosted by several members of Congress. Other events include a special program
at C-SPAN and an election exhibit at the Newseum in Arlington. The Newseum exhibit,
"Every Four Years: Presidential Campaign Coverage, 1896-2000," displays a visual
history of American presidential campaigns, with television commercials from
the Political Communication Center.
Call for Papers
The deadline for submitting position papers is May 15, 2000. Papers should
be 4 - 10 pages in double-spaced typescript, including an abstract of 75-words
or less. Submit one hard copy and one electronic copy (on diskette or via e-mail)
to Lynda Lee Kaid, Political Communication
Center, Department of Communication, University of Oklahoma, 610 Elm Ave., Norman,
Ok. 73019.
More information is available from Sherry Morreale, NCA Associate Director, at (703) 750-0533, and on on the NCA Web site.