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Dr. Flora Khoo, Post-Doctoral fellow in the School of Communication and the Arts at Regent University, has been named the recipient of the 2019 Kenneth Harwood Outstanding Dissertation Award.

Dr. Khoo is from Singapore and graduated with a Ph.D. in Communication from Regent University in August 2018. She earned a full scholarship, Dean’s Award Scholarship, to study. Her dissertation research on Innocence Killed: Recruitment, Radicalization and Desensitization of the Children of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria involves conducting a quantitative content analysis of 22 ISIS child propaganda videos to understand the persuasive appeal ISIS uses to recruit children and to identify the phases of a child’s potential involvement in terrorism. She also made a field trip to Lebanon to interview 60 Syrian parents and children impacted by ISIS child propaganda videos.

Dr. Khoo is the author of several conference presentations and one of which won second place faculty award in the open division for competitive papers at the AEJMC 2017 Southeast Colloquium. Her co-authored paper with Dr. William Brown, Research Fellow at Regent University, Comparative Uses of Twitter for Trump the Winning Combination in the 2016 Presidential Election, has been published as a book chapter in Communication and Media in the Age of Trump. Her academic research interests include communication and terrorism, the U.S. presidency and public opinion.
Dr. Khoo has been a BEA member since 2016 and currently serves as the vice-Chair of the History Division. She also participated in Campaign 2016: The Democratic National Convention with The Washington Center.

Established by Kenneth Harwood, Professor at the University of Houston and a former President of BEA, the award has been offering $1,000 for the outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in broadcasting and electronic media for over 25 years. The award was established through gifts started by Professor Harwood and a donation from a friend of BEA. Each year the recipient is selected by BEA’s Research Committee. The Harwood Dissertation Award will be presented to Dr. Khoo at BEA’s annual convention in Las Vegas during a ceremony and reception on the evening of Sunday, April 8th at the Las Vegas Westgate. Visit the Harwood Dissertation page for more information on the award.

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