ICA Annual Conference was held in Fukuoka on June 9 to 13, with more than 2500 participants coming from over 40 countries. Canadian student Hatty Liu, student of Global Communication Double Master Degree Program cooperated by CUC and Simon Fraser University, won the Top Paper Award in the conference. It is the first time for a master student  to achieve  the Top Paper Award of ICA.

The title of Liu’s paper is Humour and Habermas: Problematizing satire as public communication in France's July Monarchy, 1830-1835. It won the highest score in the double-blind review, thus was awarded as Top Paper. This paper gives a historical overview of the development of the satiric press in the political and social context of the July Monarchy mainly from 1830 to 1835 and assesses the validity of assigning to its reading public the label of “public sphere.” In the process, a critical perspective is applied to both the notion public sphere and satiric communication in terms of their ability to mediate imbalances in the distribution of discursive power and resources across society.

Hatty Liu is a Master student of Global Communication Double Master Degree Program cooperated by CUC and Simon Fraser University. She has accomplished the first academic year in Simon Fraser University, and is carrying on the second academic year in Institute of Communication Studies of CUC from September 2015.