Cihan Duran has received the Lynn M. Sebulsky Memorial Award for excellence as a first year graduate student.
During Cihan’s first year as a graduate student at Penn State he earned a 4.0 GPA, served as a TA for a large introductory class wherein the instructor, Professor Cassandra Tai, evaluated Cihan as having “exceeded expectations,” also served as a research assistant funded by National Science Foundation grant funds, and reached out to international student recruits, all of whom thanked the DGS for having put Cihan in touch with them. Finally, Cihan was entrepreneurial in finding funding sources outside of the department to help cover the cost of travel to international conferences where he presented his research.
While Cihan’s coursework, GA duties, service to the department, and conference participation were above average, where he truly stood out in his first year was in his success publishing his research. He had two articles published! The first, “A comparative analysis of online mobilization through slogan specificity: The case of the counter-movements to #BlackLivesMatter,” was published in New Media & Society. It provides a powerful new toolkit for understanding why some online movements gain cohesive momentum while others fail to translate broad appeal into collective action. Cihan’s second article “Hashtag activism and framing strategies in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the 2020 elections,” published in Politics, Groups, and Identities, offers a new way to understand how online movements strategically adapt their messaging to achieve political goals.
