Researchers from the New Political Communication Unit at Royal Holloway, University of London, are out in force for this year's American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Andrew Chadwick and co-author James Stanyer (Loughborough University) are presenting a paper entitled "Political Communication in Transition: Mediated Politics in Britain’s New Media Environment" to Panel 40-3: New Media and Political Opportunity Structures in Comparative Perspective.

Ben O'Loughlin and Alister Miskimmon (of the Department of Politics and IR at Royal Holloway) are presenting a paper on strategic narratives in international politics to the Political Communication Division's Annual Preconference, held at George Washington University on September 1.

Nick Anstead, who studied in the Unit for his PhD (awarded 2008) and who has just taken up a new post as Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, is presenting two papers. The first, co-authored with Ben O'Loughlin, is entitled "BBC Question Time and Twitter: Communicating Hate Across Platforms." The second, co-authored with Michael Bacon (of the Department of Politics and IR at Royal Holloway) is entitled "A Deweyan Conception of Democracy in the Era of Web 2.0."

The first book in Andrew Chadwick's new series with Oxford University Press, Oxford Studies in Digital Politics, is being launched at APSA. Author Philip N. Howard, of the University of Washington, will be presenting a paper based on his book "The Internet and Islam: The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy" to panel 40-7 on Religion, Technology, and Transformations in State and Society Relations.

Finally, in a related development, Nick Allen, of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, will be presenting a paper with co-author Sara Birch (University of Essex) on "The Use of Heuristics in Making Ethical Judgements About Politics" to Panel 5-8: Elements of Reasoning: Motivation, Heuristics and Cues.