UOIT Communication student’s paper sends her to prestigious Chicago conference

Presenting at prestigious conferences is a way of experiencing scholarship on a whole different level – participants have a chance to share their work and learn from each other in an environment teeming with new ideas and a passion for research. While conference presentations might be the norm for university faculty members, that’s not usually the case for undergraduate students.

However, Samantha Bates recently proved that with dedication and meticulous research, undergrads can indeed take their research to this level. A paper she wrote for her Communication Ethics class was accepted for presentation at the recent National Communication Association Annual Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

The journey began when Dr. Sharon Lauricella, Associate Professor, FSSH, assigned her students to write an analysis of a communication ethics issue. Bates chose to write about catfishing - the act of concealing who you really are so you can hook someone into an online romance. In her paper, entitled: Is it wrong to put a worm on a hook? The ethical codes of the modern-day Catfish, she looked at the interactions between catfish (perpetrators) and catfishees (victims) through an ethical lens. 

After the course was over, Dr. Lauricella asked a handful of students to submit their papers to the conference. They worked together to improve their papers and submitted them, and in June 2014, Bates received notification that she was accepted to present at the conference. “I was ecstatic,” she says. “When I started my first year, I never imagined I would be travelling anywhere to present my work.”

At the conference, Bates, along with three other presenters affiliated with universities in the U.S., presented her research on a panel entitled Fresh perspectives on the ethics of communicating identity in the present context.

“I learned a lot about how to present to a conference audience, I received thoughtful questions from the audience afterwards, and I was proud of my work, especially because I was able to hold my own among such accomplished individuals,” she says. “I loved being in an environment where communication research thrives, and being exposed to so many research subjects that I would be interested in pursuing in the future.”