Tara Haney, a graduate student studying communication at East Stroudsburg University, received three Top Paper Awards at the 2026 Eastern Communication Association Conference. The conference was held earlier this month in Pittsburgh. Along with the three paper presentations, she also presented a poster in the graduate poster panel.<\/p>\n
The first paper Haney presented was in the Kenneth Burke Society Interest Group. \u201cThe Laughing Place: A Pentad Analysis\u201d focused on an analysis of racism in the Joel Chandler Harris story, \u201cBrother Rabbit\u2019s Laughing Place\u201d and Splash Mountain attraction in Disney parks. The analysis emphasized the story was based on African folklore and the attraction was based on one African folklore story and concluded there was no racist ideology in either the attraction or the story. The graduate poster presentation was a visual illustration of this paper.<\/p>\n
The second paper Haney presented was in the interest group of Theory and Methodology [in communication]. The paper and presentation, \u201cCommunication is: Storytelling,\u201d was orally illustrated in how humans tell stories when communicating to be remembered. This point was illustrated by using urban legends to communicate social problems in society. Three theories were explained using two urban legends in the 10-minute presentation.<\/p>\n
The final presentation, presented in the Communication and Ethics Interest Group, was \u201cThe Ethics of Whistleblowing: The Dr. Jeffrey Wigand Case.\u201d This presentation focused on Stephen Toulmin\u2019s Layout of an Argument to suggest that in this whistleblowing case within the cigarette industry, Dr. Wigand\u2019s actions were ethical because the industry was committing a corporate crime by failing to communicate to the public the bodily harm consumers may endure by using the product.<\/p>\n
This was Haney\u2019s first professional\/educational conference. \u201cI entered four submissions to the conference because I was told this was a hard conference to get any papers accepted and figured the more [papers] submitted the greater the chance of acceptance. I was thrilled when I received the first acceptance and was overwhelmed with happiness once I received the notification that all of my submissions were accepted. This was the best experience, connecting with other graduate students as well as scholars from other universities during the four-day experience. I plan to submit more of my work for next year\u2019s conference. I am eager to represent ESU again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cem Zeytinoglu, Ph.D., professor of communication, who also presented a paper, accompanied Haney at the convention. Dr. Zeytinoglu stated \u201cI am very proud of Tara. It was an impressive accomplishment for a graduate student to have such presentations at ECA, which is a very selective conference. She has already received invitations to apply for Ph.D. programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
ESU\u2019s Master of Arts degree in communication is designed for working professionals as well as recent bachelor\u2019s degree graduates seeking to advance their careers or continue on for a doctorate. \u00a0For more information, please contact graduate program coordinator Dr. Margaret Mullan by calling (570) 422-3136 or email mmullan@esu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tara Haney, a graduate student studying communication at ESU, received three Top Paper Awards at the 2026 Eastern Communication Association Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":24872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[143,42,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news-release","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24873,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24870\/revisions\/24873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}