To be completely honest, I had no idea what this class entailed before I registered at the last minute during our drop/add week of the semester. I knew I needed a journalism elective and this class had one open seat left, so I took advantage of the opportunity. Once I discovered COM 4300 was a political communication class, however, I began to think my decision to take this class was a poor one, being I have no interest in politics whatsoever.
How wrong was I.
Over the course of this semester, I have learned so much about quality journalism and gained a new appreciation for political science. Never have I imagined I would enjoy any sort of political communication, much less enjoy being physically right in the middle of it all.
Three Key Concepts
I learned about many different concepts within the political communication field, but the three that stood out the most to me were framing, confirmation bias, and narrative.
Framing is how the media portray news stories, usually by focusing on certain aspects of the issue. I took this as a loose comparison to angles when writing a news story because as a journalist I have to make sure I can find a newsworthy story out of a persisting issue, and to do that I may have to focus on certain facts more than others.
I was already somewhat familiar with confirmation bias, which is when people tend to search for facts that support their preconceived beliefs, but learning about it with a political communication approach brought new light to the meaning. I think this concept contributes to the reasons why I disliked politics, because with this issue being present, people can argue their beliefs and find facts to support their statements without doing any other research and exposing themselves to differing opinions. This leads to a lot of people with one-track minds, whereas I am more of a “do your research before you debate” type person.
The last concept, narrative, is the overall theme candidates incorporate into their campaign to sell themselves to the voters. For example, Trump’s overall narrative stems from his motto “make America great again,” emphasizing his success as a businessman who knows what he is talking about.
The Semester’s Projects
I enjoyed that this class incorporated both research and journalism projects because this helped me further understand the role political communication holds in our society. With my groups, I contributed to four news stories, a field research project and two content analyses.
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| Fellow delegate Will Fowlkes describes the delegate process to members at the meeting at the East Marietta Library on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. Photo by Kristen Bryan. |
on why they were interested in becoming delegates and angled it in a way that made it more of a feature story. I assisted with the interviews, took a few pictures, and helped write the article.
The second news story was initially going to be about protesters at the Trump rally, but non-supporters were hard to find. We then noticed the number of minorities attending the event and decided to take that approach instead. We interviewed quite a few people in regards to why they came and why they support Trump. I personally learned a lot about Trump’s campaign and his impact in the election through these interviews. For this specific news story, I mostly contributed with providing audio to three different interviews with multiple people.
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| Democrat Hillary Clinton speaks to supporters at Atlanta City Hall on Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. Photo by Kristen Bryan. |
The final story was one about the state of the race after Super Tuesday. Our group focused on the GOP and Trump’s contribution to the conflicts in the party. This story was the toughest for me to write as it required a little more research on the subject while the interviews were included to support the research, which was quite opposite from the previous two stories. My task for this assignment was taking information from my group members and forming it into a news story.
For the first critical analysis, our class was given the task to compare and contrast two political candidates’ websites, and our group decided to analyze Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina in regards to whether they campaigned more positively or negatively. I analyzed Fiorina’s site and contributed to writing the paper.
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| Graph 1: The frequency of frames in 25 articles from politico.com |
The most difficult project for me was the field research, as it required the least amount of journalism. Our group decided to go more in-depth with the Clinton event, and how she campaigns to attract minority voters. My part in this project was to provide my experiences with observing the crowd at the venue, and researching the candidates’ websites and social media to compare to Clinton’s in regards to minority outreach. I tried to focus on key terms and ideas to try to find differences between the candidates. Although this project was the hardest for me, I think I learned the most from this research. It was truly eye-opening for me to see how candidates subtly use techniques to reach out to certain voters.
Learning Objectives
The class description listed four different learning objectives for the course, and though I believe I achieved all four, I feel I succeeded better at some more than others.
Demonstrating the ability to produce high-quality research projects relating to political communication in American elections
This one, I feel, was the most difficult for me to accomplish, but the most important one for me to learn. As a journalist, I need to be able to conduct research before I compose a news story so I can be as fair as possible when reporting the facts. I’ve not had much practice in this area, though, so learning how to perfect this has helped me realize how important doing the research is.
Accurately describing and providing critical perspectives on the intersection between political communication and American elections
I think I came the farthest in regards to this objective, although this was not one of my strong suits. As I stated before, I was never interested in politics, so I had never critically thought about political communication and the American elections. Having political science majors collaborate with journalism majors in our groups helped me tremendously, though, because I was able to hear their opinions on the subject and learn more about how political communication plays a role in the elections. Now I’m able to provide a critical perspective, but I feel as though I need to study this area a little bit more before I feel comfortable.
Producing high-quality political journalism on the theme of American elections
This objective put my journalism career to the test and showed me both my strengths and weaknesses at writing news stories. I think this objective was the most insightful for me and I feel like I grew as a journalist because of it. Having to write on topics I was not initially interested in helped push me to write quality journalism and has probably helped prepare me for the real world.
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| Governor John Kasich speaks with supporters at Kennesaw State University on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. Photo by Kristen Bryan. |
This objective, by far, was the most enjoyable for me. I attended three different rallies and obtained a press pass for two, and to be able to be part of the press and practice my photojournalism skills was the highlight of this class. I am striving to be in a career where I can operate behind the scenes in broadcast journalism, and these experiences really confirmed what I want to do. I recorded audio, provided quality photos and stood in the middle of the chaos – and loved every minute of it.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, I truly enjoyed this class. What started out as an “oh no” moment for me turned out to be one of my most favorite journalism classes I have taken so far. If I could to it over again, I would in a heartbeat. Thank you, Dr. Azriel and Dr. DeWitt for a fantastic, fun and insightful semester.
Since I'm a political science major, my perspective on political communication is different from yours. I find it really interesting to read your descriptions of framing, confirmation bias, and narrative because I view those concepts differently. The definition of those concepts remain the same for everyone, but I think the perspective is what's different and I find that fascinating. Even though I also am interesting in journalism, I'm also very interested in politics and researching the candidate's policy ideas.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say as a journalist, you have to have find a newsworthy story in regards to framing and also making sure to focus on certain focus on certain facts over others then that is a profound difference between our two majors. However, I think this distinction makes our writing come from different perspectives and that's definitely needed. I like to read from a journalist's perspective and I think that this plays into confirmation bias on a deeper level. This is because we are all biased on a certain level as Dr. April Johnson said in class, but at the same time we are biased in regards to our respective college majors. Both research and journalism is important, which is why I also was pleasantly surprised by this class as you were, except I was surprised by the journalism aspect and you were surprised by how much you became interested in political science.
It's interesting reading the takeaway from each person regarding this class, because depending on the major we all seem to have taken away different concepts and excelled in different objectives. I think it's great that the class provided an outlet for expanding your knowledge on conducting research, and got you interested and involved in politics! I struggled the most with producing journalism and understanding the concepts associated with it.
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