I feel confident in saying that out of my six classes this semester, this one was my favorite. It was an incredibly engaging class and my knowledge of political communication & American elections has certainly skyrocketed. Not only would I like to thank my professors for their guidance throughout the semester, I would also like to thank my classmates for making this one of the most memorable classes during my stay at Kennesaw State University.
1. Identify and discuss the
significance of three key concepts you learned this semester.
Concept #1:
Being that the majority of assignments
in this class involved collaborating with two or three group members, I learned
in this class is to…
a.)
Be responsible and
accountable for your role in an assignment.
b.)
Be prepared to tackle
the entire workload by yourself if necessary.
Although I may just seem like a student
taking out my frustration in dealing with group members that attribute minimal
content and effort to a project, upon reflection, I believe that these
experiences have better prepared me for life outside of college. With full
confidence, I feel one hundred percent comfortable in putting “works well with
others” on my resume. Not only should this let employers know that I’m able to
get along with the vast majority of differing personalities, but also that I’m
able to step up in times of crisis and manage the chaos of a project that is
going down hill.
Concept #2:
I thoroughly enjoyed the in-depth
conversations that we had in class that pertained to how to best gather
information from a political event for a newsworthy story. From this class, I
learned to…
a.) Approach writing a story from multiple angles; political figures,
reporters & voters.
b.) Diversify your content as much as possible and look for what people
are trying to hide.
Instead of simply writing about an
event to have something to add to your portfolio, make it engaging and
interactive. People don’t only care about what John Kasich thinks about student
debt. Voters also take interest in seeing how an 85 year old war veteran and an
18 year old college student differ on how they view Kasich as a possible
presidential candidate. Getting the opinions of people from different
generations is a great way to cater your story to numerous people. When
reporting about a political event, sometimes the things that the politicians didn’t
say out weigh the importance of the things that they did say. I have
learned to make note of everything that takes place at an event; big or small.
How does Bernie Sanders use body language to enhance his rhetoric? Are there
more Caucasian or people of color in attendance? Did voters’ opinions about a
politician change after the event had concluded? The moral of the story is, you
can never gather too much initial information.
Concept #3:
Pealing apart the rhetoric of
presidential candidates and being able to truly understand what they’re saying
was something that I learned from this class. In regards to politics, never
just take someone’s word for it; fact check, fact check, fact check. Not only
that, but reporters should be encouraged to dive deeper into the story. Are
Hillary Clinton’s views on boarder control different from those that she
advertised in 2008? How does Donald Trump use his rhetoric to minimally
illustrate and describe his policies on nearly every issue and still capture
the majority of votes from the Republican Party? Why and how do presidential
candidates avoid questions that they don’t have a confident answer for? Behind
the welcoming smile, three figure salary and 400 thread count suit, politicians
are just like the average American voter. Yet, the majority of their rhetoric
encompasses vocabulary that confuses some, if not most, uneducated voters.
2. Describe each of the journalism and
research projects you worked on this semester, including a specific description
of your role in each.
Content Analysis #1:
The purpose of this assignment was to
see how drastically the political campaign efforts of Hillary Clinton and Ted
Cruz vary. Primarily, my group researched both candidates’ political campaign
and career consistency, the rhetoric on their respective websites, how involved
they are with social media as well as where, geographically, they appear to
have the greatest amount of support and popularity. My roles for this assignment
included performing an in-depth analysis of Ted Cruz’s official campaign
website, https://ww.tedcruz.org/, as well as drafting and editing the final document. Our
research showed that there was in fact a significant difference between Clinton
and Cruz in nearly all of the areas that we focused on.
News Story #1:
For this project, my group had selected
to attend and report about the Bernie Sanders rally at Morehouse College. For
starters, when attending any type of event that is bound to attract hundreds if
not thousands of people, reporters need to make sure that they arrive on time;
and by on time, I mean at least an hour early. This was the first political
rally that I had ever attended. It was an exciting and engaging experience and
I hope to attend more as the election season progresses. My roles for this
project included documenting the rally by taking notes, photographing the event
and drafting and editing nearly the entire finished article. The finished
article was intended to be centered around how Sanders caters to Black and
African American voters, given the location of his rally. However, with Sanders
giving little attention to the issues directly facing these communities, the
finished article was an overview of the rally that highlighted Sanders main
speaking points.
News Story #2:
After finishing the first news story,
myself and the members of my group had decided to attend and report on a John
Kasich rally at Kennesaw State University. It was interesting to be able to
attend both a republican Town Hall and a democratic rally in one semester. The
environment was much more intimate at Kasich’s Town Hall when compared to
Sanders’ rally. Kasich was very interactive with the audience and, for lack of
a better phrase, appeared to be putting himself up on a pedestal in a sort of
casual, family-man, religious sort of way. My roles for this assignment
included taking thorough notes, photographing the event, interviewing people in
attendance and collaborating with my group members to draft our final article.
The angle of the story focused on how Kasich catered to voters as a concerned
family man. Primarily, his Town Hall was centered around the national as well
as student debt, his success as the governor of Ohio and reassuring voters that
“every single person on this Earth is made special.”
Field Research
Project:
This was a fun assignment. The content
of the final document included information and data from Bernie Sanders’ rally
at Morehouse College and quite a lot of secondary research. The goal for my
group was to shed light on how Sanders uses rhetoric to influence Black and
African American voters as well as college students and millennial voters. My
roles for this assignment included documenting the Sanders rally (notes &
pictures), interviewing Bishop Nesby (a representative of the African American
Male Initiative at KSU), researching Sanders’ past involvement with civil
rights and drafting and editing my group’s final document. Our article
showcased that, despite the criticism from Hillary Clinton, Sanders has been
and continues to be active and supportive of this demographic. My interview
with Nesby showed that the majority of Black and African American voters tend
to vote democratic; “because the Democratic Party has a long standing stigma
that they are ‘for the people’, unlike the GOP who caters more towards
cooperate America.”
News Story #3:
For this assignment, my group
collaborated together to write an article that focused on how the aftermath of
Super Tuesday did not clarify that, at that point in time, there was a clear
leader in the race for the Democratic nomination. Everyone in my group was able
to successfully interview an individual for our article. For me, I was able to
interview Professor of Political Science at Kennesaw State University Dr. Andrew
Pieper. Dr. Pieper provided a lot of information and understanding of the
political process that greatly aided us in drafting our final document. Being
that quite a lot of delegates were up for grabs on Super Tuesday, I generated
an infographic that illustrated the current delegate count for both Hillary
Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Content Analysis #2:
Ah yes, the final group project! (To my
group members, no hate; y’all did an awesome job!) For this project, my group
decided to compare and contrast 50 news articles from the Los Angles Times and
CNN that spanned a five-day period. I was tasked with reviewing and coding 25
articles from CNN and generating infographics that visually showcased our data.
For both news outlets, our coding process was to categorize each article, based
off of its contents, into the following categories:
1. horse race
– news content that emphasizes the political or election process as a
competition between candidates, including poll driven coverage, “race for
delegates,” etc. 2. conflict – news
content that focuses on how two or more candidates or political parties are in
conflict with one another
3. issues
– news content that highlights issue positions or public policy proposals of
the candidates or parties
4. candidate attributes
– news content that emphasizes the candidates’ personal qualities and
deficiencies, including the candidate’s character, experience, demeanor, skills
3. Upload at least one visual from the
course projects (photos, audio/video from interviews, charts from content
analysis/field research projects, etc.) with a description.
News Story #1: Here’s a couple pictures that I took of
Bernie Sanders and Killer Mike at Sanders’ Morehouse College rally. Perhaps if I had
obtained a press pass, I would’ve been able to get closer!
News Story #2:
I was able to get up close and personal with John Kasich at his Town Hall at Kennesaw State University.
Field Research Project: Here are a
couple photos that I took at the Sanders rally to use for this project.
News Story
#3:
After conducting
my interview with Dr. Andrew Pieper, he was kind enough to allow me to snap a
quick picture of him.
The infographic I created for this
project is actually interactive. If you move the cursor over any state, it will
show you how many delegates Sanders or Clinton acquired in that state.
Content Analysis #2:
To help illustrate the data that we
gathered from coding 50 articles from the Los Angles Times and CNN, I created
this infographic. Sorry for the poor quality photo, but you get the point!
4. Discuss and elaborate on how you did
or did not successfully accomplish each of the four expressed learning
objectives (listed below) for the course.
· Demonstrating the ability to produce
high quality research projects relating to political communication in American
elections
-I feel as though I successfully accomplished this. For every
project that required attendance at an event, I was able to attend every event,
record detailed notes and take quality pictures. Through collaborating with my
group project members to produce the best possible products, I believe that I
have gained several new perspectives as to how to gather information, record
results and style my writing to cater to a broader audience. Also, learning how
to better establish a rubric in which to categorize things into a coding system
is something that I walked away with from this class.
· Accurately describing and providing
critical perspectives on the intersection between political communication and
American elections
-Grading my success with this learning objective, out of 10,
I would give myself a 7.5-8. The stances that I took on a few assignments in
this class could have had a stronger foundation. I could certainly expand my
knowledge about previous American elections and how they have evolved over the
years. The way in which I wrote my articles could have also provided a broader
outlook for events that could plausibly occur in the near future.
· Producing high quality political
journalism on the theme of American elections
-I feel like I did a fairly good job at achieving this
learning objective. From the start of the semester, not only did my grades
improve, I feel as though my writing style and reporting abilities also
improved. I’ve certainly taken a interest in the political reporting field of
journalism and I could definitely see myself doing some freelance reporting
about American elections once I graduate. I would label my journalism in this
class to be that of high quality, rather, just quality journalism.
· Respectfully observing American
political communication processes in practice
-I
regularly follow news outlets like CNN, FOX News and the AJC. I understand that
they all have their own unique ways of reporting “the facts”. However, after
taking this class and learning more about political campaign and media biases,
I now approach the way in which I gather my news differently. For instance, if
I find an interesting article on CNN’s website, I won’t just simply read it;
I’ll analyze it and pick apart the story. Once I think that I’ve critiqued the
story enough to understand exactly why CNN chose to report it, I’ll then
research to see if any other news outlets have reported the same story and do
the exact same process with them. After comparing and contrasting two separate
news stories about the same person or event in question, I’ll then decide for
myself…
1.) Which
news outlets were bias in how they reported the story?
2.) How
accurately did they report the truth? Was there any made up information?
3.) Did the
news outlets exhaust their sources to cover the story in the best possible way?
