Communication Technology and Politics
COM407 / POL451
Autumn 2005
TTh 1:30-3:20, CMU 302
Department of Communication
Dr. Philip N. Howard
Room #227,
Enrollment: 24 Maximum
Class Website: http://www.campaignaudit.org/
COURSE
CONTENT
How is technology put to us in modern democratic politics? Pundits and presidential candidates have declared the advent of ‘politics online.’ From Bob Dole’s clumsy announcement of a campaign website address in 1996, to the coordination of protests by e-mail, and the data-mining efforts of elite lobbyists, new media technologies have become crucial components of modern campaigning. We will use some of the core concepts of deliberative democracy theory to examine the emerging role of new media technologies such as online voting, activist discussion groups, personal web-campaigns, and electronic government. More important, we will review these theories while observing the role of new media technology in the issue campaigns of fall 2005.
This course will be run as a workshop in which students are encouraged to share their critical insights on political communication so as to help all of us understand specific theoretical problems in the production and consumption of political culture. This class has several specific goals:
·
to draw lessons from specific Internet
communication strategies of issue campaigns during the fall 2005 quarter;
·
to practice collecting and analyzing raw
data, designing websites, and managing relationships with news media;
·
to understand the role of information
technology in politics, the organization of political campaigns, and the
process by which news stories get written and framed;
·
to apply these lessons in a civically
responsible, service learning project, where the class monitors presidential
campaign communications and reports findings to the public on www.
Although
this course has no formal prerequisites, students with several courses in
communication or political science will be best prepared for the pace and
expectations of this course.
TEACHING
METHOD
This
class will be a workshop in which the instructor, students, and guest lecturers
can present ideas about the conduct of politics online. We will often
talk about current events in class, so you should start listening for news
items related to course topics. Each class will probably start off with
people sharing relevant clippings or news stories read (New York Times, Wall
Street Journal and Economist Magazine recommended) or heard (NPR or BBC
recommended) during the week. Students will be responsible for generating
content ideas during our meetings, for constructing the website, for
publicizing our research findings, and for representing our project to public. E-mail will be used to conduct class business
and carry on debates outside of class time. Since irregular attendance
will disrupt our learning community, unexplained absences will affect your
grade.
This
class has almost no required reading, but students will still be expected to work
about 10 hours per week on our project.
Class time will provide 4 hours a week to for meetings with your group,
editing each other’s work, and conferring with the instructor.
METHODS
OF EVALUATION
There
are no quizzes, mid-term exams or final exams in this course. The final grade will be composed of a book
review (10%), small research projects (15%), peer evaluation (25%) and the
group’s research website (50%). The book
review will be of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice
and Loyalty and will be due in week 3.
The small research projects will be on topics of interest to particular
students, and will include the production of one public service ad. The peer evaluations will be run every two
weeks and you will be asked to asses how the peers you worked with on small
projects. Finally, there will be an
evaluation of our website at the end of the quarter, by an outside panel of
experts in website design and political communication. This committee will grade the project, and
the grade they assign will count towards everyone’s final grade. In other words, if the website gets a 3.8,
then that grade will contribute to every student’s overall grade. Early in the quarter, students as a group
will define the standards by which they want their project graded by the external
reviewers.
!!! IF YOU ALREADY KNOW YOU DON’T LIKE GROUP PROJECTS
DON’T TAKE THIS CLASS !!!
This
is a service education class where the goal is to learn about how information
technologies are used in political life by actively researching their use in
contemporary issue campaign and providing resources to journalists and the
public.
I
will not mark for grammar but if it impedes my ability to understand your
arguments or embarrasses the
REQUIRED
Hirschman,
Albert. Exit, Voice and Loyalty.
New
York Times, weekly subscription, $24.
CLASS
RESOURCES
Training
on newsroom management:
http://www.asne.org/learningnewsroom
http://www.newsroomleadership.com
MODEL WEBSITES?
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
http://www.publicintegrity.org/
http://www.counterbias.com/blog/2005/09/so-poor-so-black-so-blitzer.html
CAMPAIGNAUDIT.ORG
Projects
will be managed in small groups of two to five members, with one team
leader. Each student must be a team
leader on at least two projects during the term. The team leader is the primary contact for
external media, and is responsible for the group meeting the deadline. Projects deadlines are to be negotiated with
the instructor, and there will probably be at least five projects going live on
the website each week, some projects will require weekly updates. This website will be significantly shaped by
student proposals, so make sure your projects are doable before you propose
them to the group.
Suggestions for Weekly Projects
Database of all information hacks and leaks by
corporations in the
Study of how lobbyists incorporate Katrina disaster
for their own political goals.
Comparison of political appointees ratio to career
appointees in senior position in FEMA, EPA, and other government agencies
Email Tracker:
sign up for emails from the parties and candidates, count them and
analyze content and flow (3 people).
Information Alerts:
craft a weekly newsletter summarizing our reports, to go out regularly
each Thursday night (2 people).
Newsroom Page:
collect stories from around the country about politics and technology
from the other major news media (3 people).
Digital Propaganda:
collect and store digital propaganda, including humor (2 people).
Fact Checking:
to double check work of other teams (3 people).
Inbox Responses:
check info@
Events calendar:
technology and politics events happening during the term (2 people).
Interactivity Rating:
Do interactivity test of the major political websites, see if
interactivity changes over time. (3
people)
Privacy Policies:
Weekly check of privacy policy statement on presidential campaign
websites, looking for change. Do they
vary by state? Do they vary by candidate? (2 people)
Suggestions for Single Projects
Election Officials Database: who are all the state election officials, and
where are they getting the data for their voter rolls from? Do state-by state directory of campaign officials
in charge of voter registration list, and the company that is the provider,
with link to profile of the company. (5
people)
Response Report:
how has the response time for campaign changed in recent years? How quickly can a campaign turn around with
spin and reaction these days? How long
does it take for a campaign to respond to a news event? Compare across elections. (3 people)
Academic Bibliography: compile bibliography on technology and
campaign politics, organized by election year.
(3 people)
Credits Page:
a page with background information on who we are (2 people).
Legal Documents:
make *.pdfs of all legal documents (legislation, case history, etc)
relevant to technology and politics (privacy, datamining, etc). (4 people)
Promisekeeper Report:
assess 10 promises made by the major presidential candidates. (5 people)
Flipflop Report:
assess 10 policy flipflops made by the major presidential
candidates. (5 people)
Blog Design:
compare blog designs and content of the major presidential candidate
campaigns. (4 people)
URL Catalogue:
collect URLs on all candidates for Senate, House of Representatives,
Governor, and President, and categorize by race competitiveness. (4 people)
Website Redesign:
team to plan for redesign one week before election. (3 people)
Chart of Presidential Campaign Expenditures, cost of
campaigning, per vote, over time. (3
people)
Data Scandals:
catalogued by state. (5 people)
Glossary:
terms like spyware, virus, spam.
(3 people)
Press Kit and Strategy: to get our research into the hands of journalists. (2 people)
We
will not be campaigning for or against any candidate or issue. Under state ethics law, it is illegal to use
University facilities, phones, and computer systems (such as email and the
internet) for campaign purposes, to support or oppose any ballot proposition
(such as initiatives and referendums) or to assist or oppose any candidate for
election. The University's policy is online.
Here
is a link to our work
flow chart.
Here
is a link to your peer
review sheet.
Here
is a link to our self-assessment
criteria.
Here
is a link to our voting
error study.
Campaign Audit Blog
CampaignAudit.org:
blogger@campaignaudit.org,
blogger
Blogger: