Lotte Melenhorst wins ICA Top Student Award
Lotte Melenhorst, PhD candidate at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, has been granted a Top Student Award by the International Communication Association's (ICA) Political Communication Panel for her paper on the role of the media in the legislative process. This was announced in May 2015, during the 65th Annual ICA Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In ‘The Media’s Role in Lawmaking: A Case Study Analysis’ (concurrently published in The International Journal of Press/Politics) Melenhorst demonstrates that during the legislative process, political actors respond to media attention directly and indirectly. Incident-driven coverage often serves as a source for questions and is being used strategically by parliamentarians in legislative debates to substantiate and illustrate their position. More indirectly, long-term trends in media coverage for specific topics contribute to the introduction of and support for amendments to the bill.
Lotte Melenhorst is one of the three PhD candidates within ICA’s Political Communication Panel to win a Top Student Award in 2015. The prize winners are determined in a double-blind peer review procedure, in which experts assign points to all submitted and anonimised papers.
The ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication. It has more than 4,500 members in 80 countries.