Media and Elections
Yeshiva College Honors Program, Fall 2008
POL 2170H (28656), MW 5-6:15
Prof. Stephen Pimpare, 1514 Belfer Hall
Office Hours TBA
Course Weblog: http://crankydocs.blogspot.com/
Media do more than depict the political environment; they are the political environment.
Delores Graber, 1993
Political reasoning is reasoning by metaphor and analogy. . . . [in politics] interpretations are more powerful than facts.
Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox, 1997
Every truth, as we have seen, deposes constituted knowledge, and thus opposes opinions. For what we call opinions, are representations without truth, the anarchic debris of circulating knowledge.
Alain Badiou, L'Ethique, 1993
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 5/21/2001
All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1936
Description
Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”[1] After he had become president he had a rather different perspective, saying in 1807 that “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” Which is it? And what might he think today about the role of various media in politics generally, and elections specifically? Our goal this semester is to investigate and evaluate the role of media (television and “new media” especially) in Presidential elections with an eye toward defining for ourselves what we think media should do in a democratic polity, and then measuring their performance against our standards. I begin with the premise that “media” is as important an institution in national politics as Congress, the Supreme Court, or the Presidency: it has the power to shape opinion and ideas, to set the policy agenda, to reallocate power, to inform citizens so that they can participate in democratic governance, or to manipulate and deceive them, thereby subjecting them to the will of others.
Requirements
Attendance (10% of Total Grade). I will take attendance only once, at the very beginning of each class; to be certain that you are recorded as present, therefore, please arrive on time. If you will commit to making it possible for us to begin on time, I will, in turn, promise that we will always end on time. Absences can be excused only for documented emergency.
Informed Participation and Occasional Quizzes (10%). Please complete the required readings/viewings prior to each session, and be prepared to summarize the material under review: I will regularly ask one of you to begin discussion with a brief synopsis of the most salient points of the day’s reading. In addition, all students are asked to keep abreast of current politics and to follow the Presidential election (and any “downticket” races you have interest in) as closely as is practicable – we’ll talk about how to best do that. Please also watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at least once each every week. Very brief quizzes (about current events, class discussions, and course readings) may be used to encourage these practices. There will no opportunity to make up quizzes if you are not present when they are given.
Create a Web Log, and post substantively to it at least twice each week (50%). As you will see below, for most weeks there are particular assignments for your blogging. To get started, go to BLOGGER.COM. All of your written assignments for the course will be posted online, including your Final Exam.
Final Exam (30%). I will post the final exam question(s) to the course Blog (crankydocs) on or before December 17. Answer in a lengthy blog essay (or what the otherwise quite sensible Stephen Fry has, alas, called “blessays”), posting your final version no earlier than 9:45 PM and no later than 10:00 PM on December 31. Blogger now permits future posting, so this should be easy to achieve. Exams posted more than 10 minutes late or early will be penalized one full letter grade, and exams posted more than 15 minutes late will not be accepted and will not be graded. More details to follow.
Books
The following books are required, and have been ordered at the YC bookstore. A copy of each is on reserve in the Pollack library. Most will be available used online.
- Jan E. Leighley, Mass Media and Politics: A Social Science Perspective (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004)
- Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Unspun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (New York: Random House, 2007)
- Darrell M. West, Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952-2004 (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2005)
- Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004)
- Russell L. Peterson, Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008)
- Dan Gillmor, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2006)
Films
The following films on DVD are on reserve at the Pollack Library, and most are available from Netflix. Those marked with an [*] may contain materials that some may find objectionable (if I’ve missed some, and I likely have, let me know). Note that not all of these will be required viewing (although see the various movie review assignment options below), but all are relevant, in one manner or another, to our inquiry. Those that are about elections or campaigns specifically are in bold. To be fully literate regarding movies about campaigns, elections or politics more generally, you should know most of them. For synopses, see the imdb at http://www.imdb.com/; for reviews, see Rotten Tomatoes at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/.
NB: If you are so inspired, perhaps we could choose a handful and host a YC Election 2008 Film Festival: maybe order some food and drink, and show one each week? I’ll help, but you’ll all have to take the lead.
- 1984 (1984), Michael Radford, director
- All the King’s Men (1949), Robert Rossen, director
- All the President’s Men (1976), Alan J. Pakula, director
- Bob Roberts (1992), Tim Robbins, director
- Bulworth (1998), Warren Beatty, director*
- Broadcast News (1987), James L. Brooks, director
- The Candidate (1972), Michael Ritchie, director
- Control Room (2004), Jehane Noujaim, director
- Election (1999), Alexander Payne, director*
- A Face in the Crowd (1957), Elia Kazan, director
- Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), George Clooney, director
- Journeys with George (2003), Aaron Lubarsky and Alexandra Pelosi, directors
- The Manchurian Candidate (1962), John Frankenheimer, director
- Meet John Doe (1941), Frank Capra, director
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Frank Capra, director
- Network (1976), Sidney Lumet, director
- Orwell Rolls in His Grave (2003), Robert Kane Pappas, director
- Outfoxed (2004), Robert Greenwald, director
- A Perfect Candidate (1996), R.J. Cuter and David Van Taylor, directors
- Recount (2008), Jay Roach, director
- State of the Union (1948), Frank Capra, director
- Street Fight (2005), Marshall Curry, director
- Wag the Dog (1998), Barry Levinson, director
- The War Room (1993), Chris Hedegus and D.A Pennebaker, directors
- Weapons of Mass Deception (2005), Danny Schechter, director
Other
If you have not done so, please familiarize yourself with YU’s guidelines on plagiarism and academic integrity. Acts of plagiarism will be dealt with sternly, including failure for the assignment (and, at my discretion, for the course) and a letter sent to the Dean. If you are pressed for time and considering taking such a short-cut, talk to me instead and we’ll find an alternative. A student who presents someone else's work as his own is stealing from the authors or persons who did the original thinking and writing. Plagiarism occurs when an author directly copies another's work without citation; paraphrases major aspects of another's work without citation; or combines the work of different authors into a new statement without reference to those authors. It is also plagiarism to use the ideas and/or work of another student and present them as your own. It is not plagiarism to formulate your own presentation of an idea or concept as a reaction to someone else's work; however, the work to which you are reacting should be acknowledged and cited. These guidelines hold for online writing, as well. When in doubt, cite (or link to) the work you reference: give credit where credit is due.
Please also be aware of Fair Use guidelines when you post materials to your blog. As a rule, you should probably not include more than about 10% of any single work – instead, present the “money quote” and then link to the rest. Likewise, be aware that many images on the web are copyrighted. To find images safe to use, see http://openphoto.net/ and http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/.
Students who will be requesting documented disability-related accommodations should make an appointment with the Office of Disability Services (Abby Kelsen, Wilf Campus, 646-685-0118, akelsen@yu.edu). After approval is granted, please ensure that I receive a copy so that I can make appropriate accommodations.
Wednesday, August 27
“Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred and Schizophrenia?”
Questions for Discussion:
Are the mainstream media (MSM or Big Media) biased? In what way? Where would you find the evidence to support your view?
Do the media matter in politics? How?
Recommended prep for our first class:
Robert P. Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, “The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, no. 3 (1985) [E-RESERVES]
James Fallows, “Why Americans Hate the Media,” The Atlantic (February 1996) at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199602/americans-media
Visit the Weblog for the course at http://crankydocs.blogspot.com/
Create you own political blog: set up a free account, choose a password, and choose your Blog’s name at http://www.blogger.com/start
Monday, September 1
NO CLASS
Wednesday, September 3
Media, Elections and Democracy: Framing this Class
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Mass, Media and Politics in the United States,” “The Media as a Political Institution,” and “”What’s News?” Chapters 1-3 in Leighley, Mass Media and Politics: A Social Science Perspective
Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787, at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/jefflett/more/let51.htm
Alexis de Tocqueville, “On the Connection Between Associations and Newspapers,” from Democracy in America (1834) [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch2_06.htm]
See the list (9 items) in Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil, “The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect,” at http://www.journalism.org/print/72
View Jon Stewart on Crossfire (2004): at http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2652831?htv=12
Assignment(s) Due:
Before class meets please make sure that you have created your own blog at blogger.com and have emailed its address to me. Getting set up is easy. Honest. Post at least once to it, perhaps offering a few sentences about the questions we discussed in our first class, or commenting about something in the news. OR anything else you’d like that is related to the course.
Monday, September 8
A Fragmented Audience. . . .
Readings and/or Viewings:
Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The State of the News Media, 2008,” at http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/2008/
Lee Rainie and John Horrigan, “Election 2006 Online,” Pew Internet and American Life Project (January 17, 2007) at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Politics_2006.pdf
Assignment:
Respond substantively to one or both of these reports in a considered blog post that includes at least one external link and one embedded image
Post comments on at least one of your colleagues’ blogs
Wednesday, September 10
. . . .and its Consequences
Readings and/or Viewings:
Markus Prior, “News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout,” American Journal of Political Science 49, no. 3 (July 2005) [E-RESERVES]
Roderick P. Hart, “Easy Citizenship: Television’s Curious Legacy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 546 (July 1996) [E-RESERVES]
Grant Reeher, “Log On, Tune Off? The Complex Relationship Between Internet Use and Political Activism,” Personal Democracy Forum at http://www.personaldemocracy.com/node/836
Skim: Pew Research Center, “The News Interest Index: Two Decades of American News Preferences” at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/574/two-decades-of-american-news-preferences
Assignment:
Reflect upon some or all of these readings in light of coverage of the McCain/Obama campaign
Monday, September 15
Wednesday, September 17
Defense Against the Dark Arts
Readings and/or Viewings:
Jackson and Jamieson, Unspun (all)
Rhetorica, “Bias,” at http://www.rhetorica.net/bias.htm
Donald R. Kindler, “Communication and Politics in the Age of Information,” Ch. 11 in David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (New York: Oxford, 2003) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
View and review Outfoxed; consider if this film about bias is itself biased OR Comment on Jackson and Jamieson, perhaps drawing attention to examples of bias in current coverage
Post comments to the blogs of at least two of your colleagues
Monday, September 22
Voting and Voters
Readings and/or Viewings:
Louis Menand, “How Political Science Understands Voters,” New Yorker (August 30, 2004) at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/30/040830crat_atlarge?printable=true
Richard R. Lau, David J. Andersen, and David P. Redlawsk, “An Exploration of Correct Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections,” American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (April 2008) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Write about any aspect of the current campaign
Post comments on your colleagues’ blogs
Wednesday, September 24
Selling Candidates Like Soap?
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Overview of Ads,” “Buying Air Time,” “Ad Messages,” “Media Coverage of Ads,” and “Learning about the Candidates,” Chs. 1-5 in West, Air Wars
Michael Billig, “Political Rhetoric,” Ch. 7 in David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis, The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (New York: Oxford, 2003) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Evaluate at least four ads from current campaigns
Post comments
Monday, September 29
Wednesday, October 1
NO CLASS
Monday, October 6
Truthiness and an Inattentive Public
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Political Institutions and the Mass Media,” “The Media, Political Knowledge, and Political Attitudes,” and “Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing,” Chs. 5-7 in Leighley
“Setting the Agenda,” “Priming and Defusing,” “Playing the Blame Game,” “Ads in Congressional Elections,” and “Advertising and Democratic Elections,” Chs. 6-10 in West, Air Wars
Joshua Green, “Dumb and Dumber: Why are Campaign Commercials So Bad?” The Atlantic (July/August 2004), at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/07/green.htm
Assignment:
Posting images, text, and (especially) video to your own blog, reflect upon any of the past campaigns discussed in West and compare them with the current campaign
Post comments on at least two of your colleagues’ blogs
Wednesday, October 8
Monday, October 13, Wednesday, October 15
Monday, October 20, Wednesday, October 22
NO CLASS
Monday, October 27
Jews for Buchanan, and the Idiot vs. the Frenchman
Readings and/or Viewings:
Miranda Spencer, “Who Won the Election? Who Cares?” Extra! (January/February 2002) at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1095
Win McCormack, “Deconstructing the Election,” The Nation (March 26, 2001) at http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20010326&s=mccormack
Skim: Richard B. Niemi and Paul S. Herrnson, “Beyond the Butterfly: The Complexity of US Ballots,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 2 (June 2003): 317-26 [E-RESERVES]
Charles E. Cook, Jr., “Did 2004 Transform U.S. Politics?” Washington Quarterly 28, no. 2 (spring 2005): 173-86 [E-RESERVES]
“The Internet and Campaign 2004,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/150/report_display.asp
Assignment:
View and review Recount; reflect upon what, if anything, the contested 2000 election might tell us about next week’s election OR View and review The War Room (a documentary about the 1992 Clinton campaign) and Journeys with George (a doc about the 2000 Bush campaign) AND
Blog as often as you can about ongoing campaigns over the break, but do so on at least four separate occasions
Post comments
Wednesday, October 29
Media Effects, Governance, and Civic Engagement
Readings and/or Viewings:
“The Mass Media and Elections,” Ch. 8 in Leighley
Benjamin I. Page, “The Mass Media as Political Actors,” PS: Political Science and Politics 29, no. 1 (March 1996) [E-RESERVES]
Diana C. Mutz and Byron Reeves, “The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (February 2005) [E-RESERVES]
Diana C. Mutz, “Effects of ‘In Your Face’ Television Discourse on Perceptions of a Legitimate Opposition,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (November 2007) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Reflect upon these readings in light of recent television coverage of the election or of any political event
Post comments
Monday, November 3
Almost-Election-Day Debate
Readings and/or Viewings:
TBD
Assignment:
View and review The Manchurian Candidate and/or All the King’s Men OR View and review A Perfect Candidate and/or Street Fight OR Blogger’s Choice
Post comments
Wednesday, November 5
Who Won, and Why?
Readings and/or Viewings:
Watch as much election-day television coverage as you can bear; review as much online reporting and discussion as you can
Assignment:
Offer your own post-mortem of Big Media’s election coverage; did New Media do any better?
Post comments
Monday, November 10
Campaign Finance
Readings and/or Viewings:
Raymond J. La Raja, “From Bad to Worse: The Unraveling of the Campaign Finance System,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 6, no. 1 (2008) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Review campaign finance data at Opensecrets.org, and post a considered response in light of the 2008 election
Post comments
Wednesday, November 12
“The Infotainment Freak Show”
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Newsgathering: Business, Profession, and Organization,” Chapter 4 in Leighley
W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, “Managing the News: Spin, Status, and Intimidation in the Washington Political Culture,” Ch. 5 in When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007) [E-RESERVES]
Martin Kaplan, “Welcome to the Infotainment Freak Show,” in Andras Szanto, ed. 2007. What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics (New York: Public Affairs) [E-RESERVES]
Samuel L. Popkin, “Changing Media, Changing Politics,” Review Essay on James Hamilton, All the News That’s Fit to Sell and Matthew Baum, Soft News Goes to War in Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 2 (June 2006) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Write a review of Network, and the issues raised by it of corporate control of newsgathering organizations; compare that with the explanation offered by Bennett, Lawrence, and Livingston OR Compare Network and Broadcast News
Post comments
Monday, November 17
Fact-gatherers, adversaries, advocates, profit-seekers, or pawns?
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Political Problem, Political Solutions,” “Corporate Control and Professionalism,” “Right-Wing Criticism and Political Coverage,” “The Age of Hyper-Commercialism,” and “The Market Uber Alles,” Chs. 1-5 in McChesney, The Problem of the Media
Assignment:
Link to and discuss a story that you think is being treated as news, but should not be OR View and review All the President’s Men
Post comments
Wednesday, November 19
Measuring Public Opinion. . .
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Best Estimates,” and “20 Questions Journalists Should Ask About Poll Results,” at Public Agenda: About Polling, http://www.publicagenda.org/polling/polling.cfm
James S. Fishkin, “The Nation in a Room: Turning Public Opinion into Policy,” Boston Review (March/April 2006) at http://www.bostonreview.net/BR31.2/fishkin.html
Tom Engelhardt on Michael Schwartz, “The Opiate of the Electorate,” at http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=1881
“Public Opinion,” Chapter 4 in Murray Edelman, The Politics of Misinformation (Cambridge, 2001) [E-RESERVES]
Walter Lippman, “The Phantom Public,” in Robert Jackall, ed., Propaganda (NYU Press, 1995) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Examine polls at Pew Research Center for People and the Press (http://people-press.org/), Public Agenda (above), the Roper Center (http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/pom/pom_list.html) Retro Poll (http://www.retropoll.org/) or elsewhere. Evaluate the methodology of the poll, its findings, and the conclusions (if any) that you are being asked to draw from it
Post comments
Monday, November 24
. . . But What are We Really Measuring? And Why?
Readings and/or Viewings:
Jennifer L. Hochschild, Review of Jacobs and Shapiro, Politicians Don't Pander in Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 26, no. 6 (Dec. 2001): 1399-1403 [E-RESERVES]
Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kushner, “Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 3 (September 2005), 525-37 [E-RESERVES]
Joshua Green, “The Other War Room: President Bush Doesn't Believe in Polling -- Just Ask His Pollsters,” Washington Monthly (April 2002) at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0204.green.html
Roy L. Behr and Shanto Iyengar, “Television News, Real-World Cues, and Changes in the Public Agenda,” Public Opinion Quarterly 49, no. 1 (Spring 1985), 38-57 [E-RESERVES]
Bruce W. Hardy and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Can a Poll Affect Perception of Candidate Traits?” Public Opinion Quarterly 69, no. 5 (2005) [E-RESERVES]
Benjamin I. Page, “Is Public Opinion an Illusion?” Critical Review 19, no. 1 (2007) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Review online polling data, and reflect upon what you find in light of these readings
Post comments
Wednesday, November 26
Watchdog or Lapdog?
Readings and/or Viewings:
Eric Boehlert, “Lapdogs,” Salon.com (May 4, 2006) at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/04/lapdogs/index_np.html
Steven E. Clayman, John Heritage, Marc N. Elliott and Laurie L. McDonald, “When Does the Watchdog Bark? Conditions of Aggressive Questioning in Presidential News Conferences,” American Sociological Review 72 (February 2007) [E-RESERVES]
Michael Massing, “Now they Tell Us,” New York Review of Books 51, no. 3 (February 26, 2004) at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922, with replies and discussion: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17027
Skim: Anup Shah, “War, Propaganda, and the Media,” at http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Military.asp?p=1
View Stephen Colbert, speech delivered to the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, 2006, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa-4E8ZDj9s
Assignment:
View Weapons of Mass Deception and/or Orwell Rolls in His Grave and/or Control Room and post a review OR Write a critical review of Boehlert’s article, and weigh the evidence for his central claim – that the Washington press corps was much more antagonistic to Clinton than it has been to Bush
Post comments
Monday, December 1
Wednesday, December 3
The Democratic Virtues of Political Satire
Readings and/or Viewings:
Peterson, Strange Bedfellows (all)
Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Journalism, Satire, or Just Laughs? ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ Examined,” at http://www.journalism.org/print/10953
National Annenberg Election Survey, “Daily Show Viewers Knowledgeable About Presidential Campaign, National Annenberg Election Survey Shows,” (September 21, 2004) at http://web.archive.org/web/20050308165738/http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/2004_03_late-night-knowledge-2_9-21_pr.pdf
Matthew A. Baum, "Sex, Lies, and War: How Soft News Brings Foreign Policy to the Inattentive Public,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 2002) [E-RESERVES]
South Park, episode 119 (October 27, 2004), “Douche and Turd,” at http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103888 [CONTENT/LANGUAGE WARNING. Episode summary here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd]
In Class Viewing:
The Simpsons, episode 605 (October 9, 1994), “Sideshow Bob Roberts”
Assignment:
View Bob Roberts and/or Bulworth and/or Election and post a review OR Post an analysis of the politics of the Simpsons and South Park episodes above
Post comments
Monday December 8
Wednesday, December 10
The Least-Loved Founder and First Steps
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Introduction,” “From Tom Paine to Blogs and Beyond,” “The Read-Write Web,” “The Gates Come Down,” “Newsmakers Turn the Tables,” and “The Consent of the Governed,” Chapters 1-5 in Gillmor, We the Media
Matthew Hindman, “The Real Lessons of Howard Dean: Reflections on the First Digital Campaign,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 1 (March 2005) [E-RESERVES]
Bill McKibben, “The Hope of the Web,” Review of Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics in The New York Review of Books 53, no. 7 at www.nybooks.com/articles/18910
Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox, “Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers,” Pew Internet and American Life Project (July 19, 2006) at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf
Sarah Boxer, “Blogs,” (Review Essay), New York Review of Books 55, no. 2 (February 14, 2008) at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21013
Nicholas Lehmann, “Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists,” New Yorker (August 7, 2006) at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807fa_fact1
Assignment:
View and review Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and/or Meet John Doe and/or State of the Union [no, not the Vin Diesel one] OR Blogger’s Choice
Post comments
Monday, December 15
The Mountain Comes to Mohammed and The Need for Troll Repellent?
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Professional Journalists Join the Conversation,” “The Former Audience Joins the Party,” “Next Steps,” and “Trolls, Spin, and the Boundaries of Trust,” Chapters 6-9 in Gillmor
Daniel W. Drezner and Henry Farrell, eds., “Blogs, Politics and Power,” Special Issue of Public Choice, Vol. 134 (2008) (all) [E-RESERVES]
Matthew R. Kerbel and Joel David Bloom, “Blog for America and Civic Involvement,” Press/Politics 10, no. 4 (2005) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
View and review A Face in the Crowd OR Blogger’s Choice
Post comments
Wednesday, December 17
Final Exam Question(s) Posted
Media Regulation, State Power, and the Law
Readings and/or Viewings:
“Media Policies and Media Reform,” and “The Uprising of 2003,” Chapters 6 and 7 in McChesney
“Here Come the Judges (and Lawyers),” “The Empire Strikes Back,” and “Making Our Own News,” Chapters 10-12 in Gillmor
“Who Controls the Internet and An Army of Davids?” Slate.com Book Club, debate with Jack Goldmith, Glenn Reynolds, and Tim Wu at http://www.slate.com/id/2138537/ [NOTE: Click “Print” to get the entire exchange]
View “Net Neutrality,” from Moyer’s on America at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/neutrality.html
Assignment:
View and review 1984 OR Blogger’s Choice
Post comments
Monday, December 22
What Does the Public Know, and Does it Matter?
Readings and/or Viewings:
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “What Americans Know, “1989-2007,” at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319
“The Consequences of Political Knowledge and Ignorance,” Chapter 6 in Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know About Politics and Why it Matter (Yale University Press, 1996) [E-RESERVES]
Assignment:
Go to any two popular political blogs, and review the comments sections. What do you observe about the political knowledge of the posters? Do you think it’s representative in some way? How, or how not? OR View and Review Wag the Dog and/or Good Night and Good Luck OR Blogger’s Choice
Post comments
Wednesday, December 31
Final Exams Due
Posted to Your Blog Between 9:45-10 PM only
[1] It continues: “But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them.”