Shane Xuan ’17 – This past weekend Andrew Powell ’17, Reno Jamison ’17, and I traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to present papers for the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA).
Powell’s and Jamison’s project is independent research supervised by Dr. Shamira Gelbman, an Assistant Professor of Political Science here at Wabash College. The presentation, “Mobilizing the Electorate: Evidence from the 2014 Senatorial Candidate Twitter Feeds,” analyzed over 8,000 tweets from 76 Senate candidates in the month leading up to the midterm election to examine how the political candidates used social media in 2014. They found that candidates tweeted more in competitive races, and that party affiliation was a strong indicator of the type of tweet that was used. Their research was presented as part of a panel regarding the media, public opinion, and elections.
“It was an extremely rewarding experience to have Andrew’s and my project culminate in attending the SPSA Conference,” said Jamison. “We got excellent feedback on how to improve our paper going forward. We thank Professor Gelbman for advising our research project.”
My paper “Why Do Chinese Students Study Abroad: An Empirical Study on Brain Drain in Developing States” was presented in the Nationalism and Identity Politics panel. I study student emigrants from authoritarian states to understand the relationship between social mobility and regime stability, and to suggest how developing states could employ economic and political incentives in order to attract overseas talent.
I presented my paper at a graduate student panel, and was able to receive a lot of critical and insightful feedback on how to improve the paper and to incorporate it into a bigger project in the future. I have been in love with many academic books and articles in the past few years, and being able to talk to the authors at a national conference feels like realizing a dream that I have never thought about. All these experiences can help me tremendously as I move along into graduate school this September to pursue a Ph.D. in political science. Thank you Wabash.
I also would like to thank Professor Rory Truex for kindly sharing his China Policy Attitudes Survey (CPAS) dataset with him, and Professor Gelbman for her helpful comments on previous drafts.
These independent projects have allowed us to develop stronger research skills as well as important insights into the professional setting of doing research in political science.
We would like to thank Division III, the Political Science department, and the Undergraduate Research Committee of Wabash College for providing the financial support that enabled us to present research at this year’s SPSA conference. Both papers also will be presented at the 16th Annual Celebration of Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Work on Jan. 29.
