ISM Award Winners 2020

Daniel Cao, winner of the ISM-WG first award

IAMCR's Islam and Media Working Group is pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 awards for excellence and to congratulate them for the papers that enriched the research scope of the working group.

The selection process was based on criteria that required compliance with five standards:

  1. Originality of the paper & relevance to the work of the Islam and Media Working Group.
  2. Research methods and overall organization.
  3. Language and writing style.
  4. Comprehensiveness and cohesiveness of literature review.
  5. Conclusion and contribution to existing knowledge.

According to these criteria, the award committee decided to grant the first award to the paper titled, “Human Interest, Motivation, and SNS Regulation: A three-level framing analysis on media reporting frames of Mosque attack in New Zealand”

The author, Daniel Cao (Shanghai International Studies University) will be given a given a certificate in recognition of his work and a cash award of US$300.

Daniel Cao is a post-graduate student studying in Shanghai International Studies University, who majors in Global Journalism. His research interests lie in public opinion on social media, social network analysis (SNA), and computational communication. Temporarily Daniel is working on social network influence of US think-tanks, and the evaluation of China’s national image via SNA. His latest paper, “Rising and Containing: A National Image analysis of China and US by SNA”, has been accepted by the Chinese Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. For future studies, Daniel is planning to interpret the basic law of mass communication on social media by LDA (latent Dirichlet allocation) and semantic network analysis.

The second award will be granted to the paper titled, “Investigating new-age Islamophobia: Neo-Orientalism in Bollywood’s ‘Nationalistic’ narratives. Author Pizwak Imtiaz (Tsinghua University) will receive a certificate and a cash award of US$200. 

Pizwak Imtiaz is a PhD student at the Department of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Her research areas include postcolonial studies, neo-orientalism, Islam and media representations, and cultural imperialism. 

She holds a Masters degree in Political Science from the Central European University, Budapest. She is from Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. 

The third award is for the paper titled, “Media Portrayal of Islam and Muslims from 2011-2019: A Meta-Analysis”. The author, Sidra Tariq Jamil (Tsinghua University) will receive a certificate and a cash award of U$100.

Dr. Sidra Tariq Jamil earned her MPhil from Quaid I Azam University in the leading discipline of Defense and Strategic Studies by securing 1st position. She completed her PhD in Journalism and Communication from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. She is the founder of Jinnah Forum at University of Management and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan. This forum has provided unique opportunity to all ranks and files of UMT to enhance their professional outlook through intellectual interactions. Currently, she is working as Communications Expert at Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) Rabat, Morocco. 

Her research interest encompasses:

  • Terrorism and Post 9/11 Scenario
  • Belt and Road Initiative
  • US-Pakistan Relations

The Islam and Media Working Group expresses sincere congratulations to the winners, and encourages more researchers to participate in the group’s activities, in particular by submitting research to the next conference. Awards are planned for the 2021 conference and we are pleased to announce an additional travel grant of US$400 that will offered to a junior researcher in the event that the conference is held in face to face mode. Terms and conditions of this travel grant will be published soon on the Working Group’s webpage. The call for papers for IAMCR’s 2021 conference, to take place from 11-15 July 2021, will be published in November.