Established in 2007 in honor of the late ARSTM past President Joanna Ploeger, this annual award recognizes the top student papers submitted to sponsored ARSTM NCA panels in a given year.
The award recipient presents their work on the ARSTM-sponsored top papers panel at the annual National Communication Association conference. Award recipients also receive a plaque and are recognized at the ARSTM business meeting.
Multiple winners are recognized in years when there is a tie in the judging.
Previous Awardees
2022
“Thalidomide, Participatory Democracy, and Deliberative Regulation in the Context of Hansen’s Disease and HIV/AIDS”
Madison Krall
College of Communication and the Arts, Seton Hall University
2021
“DIY Technoliberalism for Future Bodies: Hacker Imaginaries of Corporeal Evolution”
Kate Rich
University of Washington, Seattle
2020
“‘We are grateful for your continued cooperation’: Boundary work, scientific expertise, and visceral publicity at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.”
Taylor Johnson and Duncan Stewart
University of Utah
2019
“Answering Scientism with Humanism: Practical Reasoning in Frederick Douglass’s ‘The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered'”
Luke Christie
Department of Communication Studies, University of Georgia
2018
“Scott Pruitt’s ‘Red Team/Blue Team’ and the Cultural Politics of Scientific Debate”
Jay Frank
Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota
2017
“Oklahoma’s Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Fracking, Earthquakes, and a Website”
Alexandria Agee
Department of Communication, University of Utah
2016
“Dire Fires: The Deficit Model and Rhetoric of Crisis in the Flame Challenge”
Amanda Friz
Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin–Madison
2015
“Challenging Abnormality: Alfred Kinsey and the Role of Scientific Translation in the Preinception of Liberation”
Brendon Bankey
Department of Communication Studies, University of Kansas
2014
“Mapping the Contours of Translation: Rhetorical Properties of Visual and Verbal Uncertainties in the Ozone Hole Controversy”
Kenny Walker
Department of English, University of Arizona
2013
“The Scientific Construction of Publics: Mars One, Reality TV, and Democratic Rhetoric”
Jonathan Brennen
School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina
“Toward an Algorithmic Rhetoric”
Chris Ingraham
Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder
2012
“Signatures and Spin-offs: Sequences of Ignorance in the Theory/Practice Split of the Ecological Society of America, 1920-1950”
Kenneth C. Walker
Department of English, University of Arizona
2011
“Chasing Prevention: HIV, Containment Rhetoric, and Scholarly Intervention”
Jennifer Malkowski
Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder
“Chat: On Writing the History of an Interface”
William McClain
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at University of Southern California
2010
“‘Car Noises Have Meaning’: The Cultural History of Auto Sound, 1926-Present”
David Morris
Communication Studies, University of Iowa
2009
“My Mobile Maneuver: Technology, the Rhetorical Maneuver, and Kairotic Subjectification”
Daniel Sutko
Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, North Carolina State University
2008
“Rover as Member: Collaborating Rather Than Controlling Technology”
Zara Mirmalek
Departments of Communication and Science Studies, UC San Diego