Course Syllabus

Communication and Political Representation, Communication Studies 463

Instructor: Prof. Stuart Soroka, Rm. 5338 North Quad, ssoroka@umich.edu

Outline: It is hard to imagine modern representative democracy without communication technology, and particularly without mass media.  This class accordingly looks at some of the roles that communications technology and mass media play in citizen-government relations.  It focuses on the link between mass media, media technologies and distributions of political power; ideas related to mass media as a Fourth Estate, holding Governments accountable to citizens; biases in political news coverage; and the need for mass media to help produce informed democratic citizens.  Discussions focus on where mass media succeed and fail, and on the consequences of media performance for political decision-making and the functioning of representative democracy.  After spending much of the term focused on the weaknesses and failures of mass media, we turn to a few of my recent interests in ‘recovering democracy’ through mass media.  Finally, we focus on your interests – our final classes focus on presentations of whatever topics you have been most interested in over the term.

Course Design: This capstone course is intended to provide a forum for soon-to-graduate students to apply what they’ve learned in their time here, especially through the Communication Studies curriculum, to a series of complex issues or problems. Leadership of the capstone course is shared by students, while I act as a facilitator guiding students towards interesting discussions and projects on issues of current concern in political communications.

The small-class design means that students are able to take part in conversation easily; the class is a good venue to practice public speaking, and debate. It also offers a glimpse of what coursework is like in graduate school; and our readings are not drawn from textbooks – they are for the most part empirically-oriented research articles from academic journals. Most of our time will be taken with collective discussion and analysis of the assigned readings, and debate about the issues therein. Students will play a central role in class preparation and in the content and progress of discussions.

Classes revolve around the assigned readings, which students are required to read in preparation for each class, with an eye toward identifying themes and generating questions and comments for discussion. There will be times when, as a class, we want to use online resources in seminar; otherwise, laptops and cell phones are not allowed in class.

Reading Material: All course readings will be made available on Canvas – this way everything is easily accessible, and reading is easily completed before every class.   There is one required paper that must be read for every class.  Some classes, there are supplementary readings that are not required but will be useful for those interested in the topic, relevant for our discussion, and can be used in assignments.  There will be additional material presented by the instructor as well, in class – this will be made available to students through the term, but is not required class reading.

Course Requirements: Grades are based on the following:

Blog posts (60%): Every student must submit a 250 to 400-word blog on either Tuesday or Thursday, every week of term beginning September 15^th.  Blogs are submitted through Canvas, and are related to the current weeks’ readings.  Blogs can simply review the readings, outlining their central arguments; they can also link to other related academic work, or current events, and discuss how that work relates to what we are currently reading.  Students can select which day each week they would like to submit a blog, and this can vary week to week, based on interest in readings, or other commitments.  In short, submit one blog a week, one of the days we have class.  Students needn’t indicate when they want to submit – they simply prepare and submit a blog on a Tuesday before class (about Tuesday’s reading), or on a Thursday before class (about Thursday’s reading.  (There will be one or two break weeks during which blogs needn’t be submitted.  These will be announced during the term.)  No late blogs are accepted – blogs must be submitted by noon before class starts, or students receive no credit.  Blogs are graded on a five-point scale: not submitted (0%), submitted but inadequate (40%), adequate (60%), interesting (80%), and excellent (100%).  Blogs are available only to the instructor; but with students’ permission, I will make some exemplary blogs available to the class through the term.

Research topic presentations (15%): All students have to make one 15 to 20-minute presentation on a political communications-related issue that you find interesting. This can be an issue we deal with in class; it can also be another, related issue.  You should identify a topic midway through the term, and think about how best to present it.  You will need to pull together some literature related to your subject, and then make and present a slide show on that topic. These will be presented in the final weeks of class; and slide shows must be made available to the class through Canvas.

Class participation (25%): A small seminar class is highly dependent on student participation. You are expected to come to class with readings completed, and with some ideas about those readings. Each class will begin with a few students’ thoughts on the day’s readings – be prepared.  Your participation in class discussion, and in particular your insights on weekly readings, are the focus of this grade.

Further details on assignments will be made available in class.  This syllabus is subject to change, based on student interest and course progress.

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Schedule

Sept 10: Introductions

Communications Technology & Political Power

Sept 15: Harold A. Innis. 1951. Selections in The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press): 33-60.

Sept 17: Jeffrey B. Abramson, F. Christopher Arterton and Gary R. Orren. 1988. “The New Media and Democratic Values” in The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics (New York: Basic Books Inc.).

New Media & Political Power

Sept 22: W. Russell Neuman. “The Impact of the New Media,” in W. Lance Bennett and Robert M. Entman, Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press).

Sept 24:  Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain. 2008. “The Role of Digital Media,” Journal of Democracy 22(3): 35-48.  

Can Citizens Manage Democracy?

Sept 29: Walter Lippmann. 1922. “The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads” in Public Opinion (New York: The Free Press): 3-20.

Oct 1: Zoe M. Oxley. 2011. “More Sources, Better Informed Public? New Media and Political Knowledge,” in Richard L. Fox and Jennifer M. Ramos, eds., iPolitics: Citizens, Elections, and Governing in the New Media Era (New York: Cambridge University Press).

Manufacturing Consent?

Oct 6:  Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Chapter 1 in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon): 1-35. Supplementary: Move, shown in class.

Oct 8:  Steven Wildman. 1994. “One-way Flows and the Economics of Audiencemaking,” in J. Ettema and D.C. Whitney, eds., Audiencemaking: How the Media Create the Audience (Thousand Oaks: Sage).

Partisan Bias       

Oct 13: Johanna Dunaway. 2013. “Media Ownership and Story Tone in Campaign News Coverage.” American Politics Research 41: 24-53,

Oct 15: Matthew A. Baum and Tim Groeling. 2008. “New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse.” Political Communication 25: 345-365.

Problems in News Selection

Oct 20: Joshua Meyrowitz. 1994. “The (Almost) Invisible Candidate: A Case Study of News Judgment as Political Censorship,” in M. Aldridge and N. Hewitt, eds., Controlling Broadcasting (Manchester: Manchester University Press):93-107.

Oct 22: David Altheide. 1987. “Format and Symbols in TV coverage of Terrorism in the United States and Great Britain.” International Studies Quarterly 31(2): 161-176.

Negativity

Oct 27: Stuart Soroka. 2012. "The Gatekeeping Function: Distributions of Information in Media and the Real World," The Journal of Politics 74(2); 514-528. Supplementary: P.J. Shoemaker. 1991. Gatekeeping. (Newbury Park: Sage).

Oct 29: John Geer. 2012. “The News Media and Rise of Negativity in Presidential Campaigns.” PS: Political Science and Politics 45(3): 422-427.

Infotainment

Nov 3: Neil Postman. 1985. “The Age of Show Business” in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin): 83-98. 

Nov 5: class cancelled.

Nov 10: Daniel J. Boorstin. 1975. “From News Gathering to News Making: A Flood of Pseudo-Events.” Chapter 1 in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Athenueum): 7-45.

Nov 12: John Street. 2004. “Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6: 435-452.

Inequalities in Communication and Politics

Nov 17: Pippa Norris. 2001. Selections in Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Nov 19: Marcus Prior. 2005. “News vs Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout.” American Journal of Political Science 49(3): 577-592.

Recovering Democracy (through Mass Media)?

Nov 24: Stuart Soroka, Blake Andrew, Toril Aalberg, Shanto Iyengar, James Curran et al. 2013. "Auntie Knows Best? Public Broadcasters and Current Affairs Knowledge," British Journal of Political Science 43(4): 719-739.

Nov 26: Stuart Soroka and Christopher Wlezien. 2015 “On the Sources of Public Responsiveness to Policy.” Paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco CA.

Project Presentations

Dec 1-10: TBA.