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LAWRENCE -- A University of Kansas dean who has worked extensively to help improve presidential debates in this country has been invited to South Korea to help officials there better utilize their televised presidential debates.
Diana Carlin, dean of the Graduate School and International Programs and professor of communication studies at KU, is a key speaker at a July 12 seminar in Seoul, South Korea. She was invited by the Korean Broadcasting Institute.
Since 1987, Carlin has been on the advisory board for the U.S. Commission on Presidential Debates. For the past two U.S. presidential elections, Carlin has served as national director of DebateWatch, a national project sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. DebateWatch organized group viewings of the televised debates across the nation, conducting surveys immediately following each debate to determine what viewers thought were the most and least relevant issues.
Carlin's talk in South Korea will be part of the seminar, titled "Communicating the Presidency: Televised Debates and Campaign News Coverage." She will discuss the rules of televised presidential debates and the problems and promises of the televised debates in both the United States and Korea.
This is not the first time Carlin has traveled abroad to help a young democracy. In February 2001, Carlin visited with officials in Benin, West Africa, to help that country establish its first televised presidential debates.
Joining Carlin in South Korea is Mitchell McKinney, one of her former graduate students who is on faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Carlin and McKinney co-edited a book on the 1992 U.S. presidential debates.
Four KU faculty and five graduate students also are with Carlin in Korea for a three-day conference, July 12 through 14, of the Pacific Asian Communication Association. Carlin is the association's executive director and is the conference co-planner with colleague Nobleza Asuncion-Lande, president of PACA and professor of communication studies at KU.
Also presenting at the conference are Shannon Campbell, assistant professor of journalism; Carl Lande, professor emeritus of government, and Dorthy Pennington, associate professor of African and African-American studies. The following doctoral students in communication studies also are presenting: Jamel Bell, St. Louis, Mo.; Khisu Beom, Seoul, South Korea; Philip Chidester, Cedar City, Utah; Mary Anna Kidd, Plainview, Texas; and JeeHae Lim, Seoul, South Korea.
The Korean Broadcasting Institute paid for Carlin's travel expenses.
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