E-Portfolio; concluding a semester of political communication

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?