Books

Waisanen, Don J., Jarvis, Sonia, & Gordon, Nicole. (2023). States of Confusion: How Our Voter ID Laws Fail Democracy and What to Do About It. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Puligadda, Sanjay & Waisanen, Don J. (2022). Innovation Soup: A Recipe for Organizational Success. New York, NY: Business Expert Press.

Waisanen, Don. J.  (2021). Leadership Standpoints: A Practical Framework for the Next Generation of Nonprofit Leaders [Complete Open Source Book]. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press (Elements in Public and Nonprofit Administration series).

Waisanen, Don J. (2021). Improv for Democracy: How to Bridge Differences and Develop the Communication and Leadership Skills Our World Needs [Introduction Chapter]. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press (New Political Science series).

Williams, Daniel, & Waisanen, Don J. (2020). Real Money, Real Power? The Challenges with Participatory Budgeting in New York City [Introduction Chapter]. New York, NY: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Smith, Robert C., Waisanen, Don J., & Barbosa, Guillermo Y. (2019). Immigration and Strategic Public Health Communication: Lessons from the Transnational Seguro Popular Project [Introduction Chapter]. New York, NY: Routledge.

Waisanen, Don J. (2018). Political Conversion: Personal Transformation as Strategic Public Communication [Introduction Chapter]. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (Lexington Studies in Political Communication series).

Journal Articles

Waisanen,  Don J. & Becker, Amy. (2021). The Bedtime Story Wars: Children’s Picturebooks as Parodic Advocacy. Communication Quarterly.

Waisanen, Don J. & Kafka, Judith.* (2020). Conflicting Purposes in U.S. Education Reform: The Paradoxes of Arne Duncan’s Educational Rhetoric. Rhetoric & Public Affairs. [*Both authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper]

Waisanen, D. J. (2018). The Comic Counterfactual: Laughter, Affect, and Civic Alternatives. Quarterly Journal of Speech.

Waisanen, D. J. (2017). Using the Pecha Kucha Speech to Analyze and Train Humor Skills. Communication Teacher, 1-5.

Becker, A. B., & Waisanen, D. J. (2016). Laughing or Learning with the Chief Executive? The Impact of Exposure to Presidents’ Jokes on Message Elaboration. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 30(1), 1-19.

Waisanen, Don J. and Becker, Amy B. (2015). The Problem with Being Joe Biden: Political Comedy and Circulating Personae. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 1-16.

Waisanen, Don J. (2015). Comedian-in-Chief: Presidential Jokes as Enthymematic Crisis Rhetoric. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 45(2), 335-360.

Waisanen, Don J. (2015). A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Decorum: Quintilian’s Reflections on Rhetorical Humor. Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 18(1), 29-52.

Waisanen, Don J., Friedman, Hershey H., and Friedman, Linda Weiser. (2015). What’s so Funny about Arguing with God? A Case for Playful Argumentation from Jewish Literature. Argumentation: An International Journal on Reasoning, 29 (1), 57-80. [Impact Factor: 0.717, © 2012 Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports]

Waisanen, Don J. (2014). Toward Robust Public Engagement: The Value of Deliberative Discourse for Civil Communication. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 17(2), 287-322.

Hayden, Craig , Waisanen, Don J., and Osipova, Yelena (2013). Facilitating the Conversation: The 2012 U.S. Presidential Election and Public Diplomacy Through Social Media. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(11), 1623-1642.

Waisanen, Don J., and Becker, Amy* (2013). From Funny Features to Entertaining Effects: Connecting Approaches to Communication Research on Political Comedy. Review of Communication, 13(3), 161-183. [Lead article; *Both authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper]

Remler, Dahlia, Waisanen, Don J., and Gabor, Andrea (2013). Academic Journalism: A Modest Proposal. Journalism Studies, 15(4), 357-373. [Lead article; Impact Factor 0.798, ©2013 Thomson Reuters, 2012 Journal Citation Reports®]

Waisanen, Don J. (2013). Hermeneutic Range in Church-State Deliberation: Cross Meanings in the Los Angeles County Seal Controversy. Western Journal of Communication, 77(4), 361-381. [Lead article]

Waisanen, Don J. (2013). (Trans)national Advocacy in the Ousting of Milošević: The Otpor Movement’s Glocal Recursions. Communication Studies, 64(2), 158-177.

Waisanen, Don J. (2012). Bordering Populism in Immigration Activism: Outlaw-Civic Discourse in a (Counter)public. Communication Monographs, 79(2), 232-255. [Ranking: 1/67 in Communication; Impact Factor: 2.029, © 2011 Thomson Reuters, 2010 Journal Citation Reports]

Waisanen, Don J. (2011). Political Conversion as Intrapersonal Argument: Self-Dissociation in David Brock’s Blinded by the Right. Argumentation and Advocacy, 47(4), 228-245.

Waisanen, Don J. (2011). Crafting Hyperreal Spaces for Comic Insights: The Onion News Network’s Ironic Iconicity. Communication Quarterly, 59(5), 508-528. [Lead article]

Waisanen, Don J. (2011). Jokes Inviting More than Laughter . . . Joan Rivers’s Political-Rhetorical Worldview. Comedy Studies, 2(2), 139-150.

Waisanen, Don J. (2011). Satirical Visions with Public Consequence?: Dennis Miller’s Ranting Rhetorical Persona. American Communication Journal, 13(1), 24-44.

Becker, Amy, Xenos, Michael, and Waisanen, Don J. (2010). Sizing up The Daily Show: Audience Perceptions of Political Comedy Programming. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 18(3), 144-157.

Waisanen, Don J. (2009). A Citizen’s Guides to Democracy Inaction: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Comic Rhetorical Criticism. Southern Communication Journal, 74(2), 119-140. [Lead article]

Waisanen, Don J., and Reynolds, Rodney A. (2008). Side-Coaching the Public Speech: Toward Improvisational Delivery Adjustments in the Moment. Communication Teacher, 1(1), 18-21.

Book Chapters and Refereed Proceedings

Hoffman, David, Lewis, Tiffany, & Waisanen, Don J. (2021). The Language of Political Genres: Inaugural and State Speeches of New York City Mayors and U.S. Presidents. Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association conference.

Waisanen, Don J. (2019). Communication Training’s Higher Calling: Using a Civic Frame to Promote Transparency and Elevate the Value of Services. In J. D. Wallace and D. Becker (Eds.), Handbook of Communication Training. New York, NY: Routledge.

Waisanen, Don J., Hahn, Allison., & Gander, Eric. (2019). Text, Talk, Argue: How to Improve Text-Driven Political Conversations. In C. Winkler (Ed.), Networking Argument. New York, NY: Routledge.

Waisanen, Don J. (2019). The Political Economy of Late-Night Comedy. In J. Webber (Ed.), The Joke is On Us: Political Comedy in (Late) Neoliberal Times. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (Politics and Comedy: Critical Encounters series).

Waisanen, Don J. (2018). Arguments for Everybody: Social Media, Context Collapse, and the Universal Audience. In R. Lake (Ed.), Recovering Argument. New York, NY: Routledge.

Waisanen, D. J. (2018). The Rise of Advocacy Satire. In J. Baumgartner and A. Becker (Eds.), Political Humor in a Changing Media Landscape: A New Generation of Research. Lanham, MD: Lexington Studies in Political Communication series (Rowman & Littlefield).

Hoffman, David, and Waisanen, Don J. (2014). At the Digital Frontier of Rhetoric Studies: An Overview of Tools and Methods for Computer-Aided Textual Analysis. In Jim Rodolfo and Bill Hart-Davidson (Eds.), Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities (pp. 169-183). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Waisanen, Don J. (2014). Standing-Up to the Politics of Comedy. In Roderick Hart (Ed.), Communication and Language Analysis in the Public Sphere (pp. 426-442). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Waisanen, Don J. (2014). The Onion. In Kerric Harvey (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics (pp. 913-914). Thousand Oaks, CA: CQ Press/Sage.

Waisanen, Don J. (2013). An Alternative Sense of Humor: The Problems with Crossing Comedy and Politics in Public Discourse. In Clarke Rountree (Ed.), Venomous Speech and other Problems in American Political Discourse (Vol. 2; pp. 299-315). New York, NY: Praegar.

Waisanen, Don J. (2013). Shouting, Clapping, and Laughing with the Monks: Toward a Boisterous, Cosmopolitan Argumentation Pedagogy. In Catherine Palczewski (Ed.), Disturbing Argument (pp. 444-450). New York, NY: Routledge.

Lageson, Sarah, Erensu, Sinan, and Green, Kyle. (2013). Laughter and the Political Landscape. In Doug Hartmann & Chris Uggen (Eds.), The Social Side of Politics (pp. 117-138). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co. **Contributor to roundtable exchange along with R. Lance Holbert, Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville, Bruce Williams, and Dannagal Young.

Waisanen, Don J. (2011). Trust and Social Networks. In George Barnett (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Networking (Vol. 2; pp. 874-877). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Waisanen, Don J. (2011). Argument Ecologies in Social Media: Populist Reason in Facebook Immigration Pages. In Robert Rowland (Ed.), Reasoned Argument and Social Change. Washington, DC: National Communication Association.

Waisanen, Don J. (2009). Facebook, Diasporic-Virtual Publics, and Networked Argumentation. In Dennis Gouran (Ed.), The Functions of Argument and Social Context. Washington, DC: National Communication Association.

Waisanen, Don J., and Suzuki, Takeshi (2008). From The Colbert Report to Counterfactual Argument: Reflections on Parodic Public Spheres. Proceedings of the 3rd Tokyo Conference on Argumentation, Tokyo, Japan.

Book Reviews

Waisanen, Don J. (2009). Identity’s Strategy: Rhetorical Selves in Conversion [Book Review]. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 12(1), 145-147.

Waisanen, Don J. (2008). The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America [Book Review]. International Journal of Communication, 2, 8-10.

Waisanen, Don J. (2008). Culture-on-Demand: Communication in a Crisis World [Book Review]. Journal of Communication and Religion, 31(2), 342-346.