Top Faculty Paper
2025
Kuansong Victor Zhuang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore): Disrupting Inclusion: Seeing Disability in a Public Education Campaign
2024
Alex Scott and Javie Ssozi (University of Iowa): Colonial Legacies and Local Visions: Analyzing Visual News in Uganda
2022
Allison Kwesell (Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University): Photographs and COVID-19: The Therapeutic Quality of Shared Narratives and Collective Memory
2021
Tommaso Trillò, et al., (The Hebrew U of Jerusalem): ‘What Does #Freedom Look Like? Instagram and the Visual Imagination of Values’
2020
Regina Marchi (Rutgers): Meaningful Properties: Bathtub Madonnas as Media in an Italian-American Neighborhood in Transition.
2019
Cornelia Brantner, Daniel Pfurtscheller, and Katharina Lobinger (IWAF Institute for Knowledge Communication and Applied Research): “People Only Share Videos They Find Entertaining or Funny.” Rightwing Populism, Humor and the Fictionalization of Politics. A Case Study on the Austrian Freedom Party’s 2017 Online Election Campaign Videos.
2018
Katharina Lobinger (USI – U della Svizzera italiana), Benjamin Kramer (LMU Munich), Eleonora Benecchi (Università della Svizzera italiana), and Rebecca Venema (Università della Svizzera italiana, Institute for Communication Technologies (ITC))
Top Student-Led Paper
2024
Jiayue Ma and Min Ge [co-author faculty Yiyan Zhang] (Renmin University of China): Does Nationalism Speak Louder Than Knowledge? Incivility Contagion in Controversial Science Communication in Danmaku-Enabled Videos
2022
Yi Xu (Technische Universität Ilmenau): Portraying the pandemic: Analysis of textual-visual frames in German news coverage of COVID-19 on Twitter
2021
Kathryn Higgins (London School of Economics and Political Science): Through the Kaleidoscope: News Images, Vantage Points and the Mediated Time-Space of Crime Events
2020
Marie Fioureaux & Baldwin Van Gorp (KU Leuven): Cartoons as Bridge Builders: Dialogues on Radicalization with the ‘Suspect Community’
Top Poster / Interactive Paper
2019
Yu Ma (University of Copenhagen): Film Aesthetics of Circular Frame: A Case Study of Film “I am not Madame Bovary”.
2018
Anna-Maria Volpers
Top Student Paper(s)
2025
Menna Elhosary (City St George’s, University of London): Pixels of Prejudice: Decoding Embedded Biases in AI-Generated News Imagery and their Implications for Visual Journalism—Toward an Algorithmic-Mediated Visual Framing
2021
Michael Kim (U of Miami): Post-Humanitarian Audiences: Audiences’ Responses to Post-Humanitarian Communication
Alex Scott (U of Texas at Austin): Expanding the Visual Paradigm: Importing the Visual Ideograph into Framing Research
2020
Jasmine Gray (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): Life Plotting: A Self-Conceptualization Process.
Yuchen Liu & John Watson. (University of Kansas): Meme(bership) Cost: #JustDoIt: A Thematic Study of Internet Memes Following Nike’s Colin Kaepernick Ad
2019
- Hanna Morris (University of Pennsylvania): Aesthetic Disruptions in Everyday Life: Resolving the Contradictions of a Cosmopolitan Ideal in Contemporary Berlin
- Xuelian He (Georgia State University): Spectator Multitude: The Epitomization of Reddit Place
- Rebecca Venema (UniversitaÌ della Svizzera italiana): Visuals and Visibility in Networked Public Spheres: The 2017 G20 Protests, New Avenues of Policing and Implications for Visual Communication Research
2018
- Fan Liang (U of Michigan), Wei Chen (Information Technology Development Think-Tank, Hangzhou Dianzi U), and Li Cheng (Fudan U)
- Tali Aharoni (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
- T.J. Thomson (Missouri School of Journalism)
- Ally McCrow-Young (U of Copenhagen)
Top Reviewer
2025
Manatalah Soliman (Edith Cowan University)
2022
Giorgia Aiello (University of Leeds)
2021
Kareem El Damanhoury (University of Denver)
2020
Kyser Lough (University of Georgia)
2019
Allison Kwesell (Embry Riddle Aeronautical University)
Top Dissertation Award
2025
Anat Leshnick (Information Society Project at Yale Law School): Military Power in an Information Battlefield: Revisiting the Role of Images in Human Rights Contexts
2024
Kristian Jeff Agustin (Manchester Metropolitan University / De La Salle University): Imagining the Contemporary ASEAN Discourse by way of Participatory Photography and Curatorial Collaboration
Outstanding Journal Article Award
2025
Alexandra Lasczik, Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Maia Osborn, Lisa Siegel, and Marianne Logan (Southern Cross University, Queensland, Australia): “Landcare and landscapes and accidental beauty: failing digital technologies and the gaze of child researchers” (published in the journal Visual Communication)
Note: This is not a comprehensive list; we are currently aiming to revisit our previous records to complete the list.
ICA Visual Communication Studies 