By:
Brenna Clairr O'Tierney
M.A. in Strategic Public Relations
First-year MSPR student and Annenberg Fellow Emily Gee just racked up another honor to add to her growing list of awards. Now she can check the USC Graduate Research Symposium off of her list since she won 3rd place in early April in a highly competitive contest where she competed against master’s and doctoral students from across the university. Prior to the start of grad school, she won the 2012 USC Outstanding Public Relations Student of the Year award, the 2012 USC Discovery Scholar award, and she was named a 2011 USC Bishop Scholar -- all during her undergraduate career.
Gee worked closely with Annenberg Professor Kjerstin Thorson, Dr. Emily Vraga, and Neta Kligler-Vilenchik starting in September 2012 on a research project that Gee called “Engaging or Enraging: Political Talk on Facebook.” The team did most of the research during November’s presidential election in an attempt to uncover how people talk about politics with each other on Facebook. After conducting 20 hour-long interviews and analyzing the results from 500 online surveys, the team found that it’s very difficult to predict what someone will say on Facebook.
“There’s not one type of person or a sole model,” said Gee. “But we did conclude that if you’re politically interested and you’re not conflict-avoidant then you’ll likely want to post about politics on Facebook.”
Gee has an extensive research background and triple majored in political science, environmental science, and public relations in college. She wrote her thesis about the differences in environmental ads between China and the U.S., and she flew all the way to China to conduct research and focus groups.
“Having the opportunity to study with Kjerstin was one of the reasons why I wanted to come back to USC for graduate school,” said Gee. “I had heard about the research that she was doing on the effects of digital and social media on political engagement, activism and persuasion, and I was really interested in learning more about how social media and politics overlap. I also wanted to probe at the issue of whether Facebook can be used to make more young people engaged and interested in politics.”
Back in February, Gee spotted some posters on campus about a call for submissions to the fifth annual Graduate Research Symposium. After submitting an abstract and receiving the news that she had made it to the second round, Gee had to produce a five minute video of herself presenting the research. After moving on to the third round, she designed a PowerPoint presentation. The fourth round involved a live judging at the Tutor Campus Center Ballroom while Gee talked about the research. The judges then picked five candidates to move on to the final round where each person had five minutes to address a flurry of questions from six faculty judges.
“I was really nervous before the Q&A since the other candidates were doctoral students who had significant experience defending a dissertation,” said Gee. “They asked me some tough questions, but I felt very well prepared since our research was so thorough.”
The judges chose the top three winners shortly afterward, and the dean of the graduate school presented Gee with the third place award along with $500.
“I was very surprised that I did so well, and it was extremely validating as a researcher to know that others in the field view our work as important and impactful,” said Gee.
Gee and her research team recently submitted an academic paper based on the research to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), and if it’s accepted then the team will fly to Washington D.C. this summer to present the key findings at the association’s annual conference.
“I feel unbelievably lucky to have had the opportunity to work with such a dynamic group of researchers,” said Gee. “Everyone put their heart and soul into this project, and I’m honored to have been a part of it.”
In the future, Gee wants to combine her love of research with her passion for advocacy -- particularly in the environmental sector -- to build highly strategic PR campaigns.
“Campaigns that incorporate sound data with strategic PR often have the greatest impact,” said Gee, “and you have to do the market research in order to get there -- or else you’re blindly proposing tactics without any concrete knowledge of your target audiences. The challenge of integrating the numbers with the messaging in a compelling way is what I love most about PR.”
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