FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 18, 2006
Contact: Deana Middleton
(662) 329-7119

Anderson, co-authors win award
 
COLUMBUS, Miss.- Mississippi University for Women associate professor of political science Dr. Brian Anderson and co-authors Mark Goodman from Mississippi State University and Mark Gring from Texas Tech won the best paper award at the International Association of Linguistics, Behavioral, and Social Sciences conference. 
   
The award was given after peer evaluation of 79 papers.
   
“The Visual Byte:  Bill Clinton and His Town Hall Meeting Style,” examined Clinton’s use of gestures, facial expressions and other visual cues to help increase his verbal message and attack that of his opponents during the “town hall” debates televised in the course of the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. The topic follows research distinguishing between visual impression and rhetoric in presidential debates and begins with the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, according to Anderson. 
   
“The “town hall” debate format was an attempt to revive interest in the presidential debates,” Anderson said, adding that in recent years, especially the 2004 presidential election, “the network changed the logistics somewhat, so that camera shots were closer on Kerry and Bush, preventing one candidate from invading the space of the other, which Clinton had freely done in 1992 and 1996.”
   
The paper was published in the IALBSS conference proceedings and is also being submitted to a journal for possible publication.