My Experience in PoliCom

This semester in Political Communications Dr. DeWitt and Dr. Azriel have taught me great lesson not only in education, but also in personal growth and experience. I just want to say thank you for everything.

 Framing, Narrative, and Confirmation

Three key concepts that I learned are framing, narrative, and confirmation. I knew a few information about these concepts but this classes helped me further understand them. Framing is how something (news) is presented to the people. In political communication framing was used to see how the media covered the election and to figure out which concept the media used that includes “Horse Race”, “Issues”, “Candidate Attribution” and “Conflict”. News outlets use these frames to tell stories in different perspective.

Narrative is telling a story to the audience. These presidential candidates use narratives to get their points across to the voters. An example would be Hillary Clinton and her narrative is that she is with the people. She is getting more personal with the audience by telling them that she wants to here their story and together we can do anything.

Confirmation is people seeking information that relates to their own personal views or beliefs. This goes to audiences that read an article that go with their belief towards a particular candidate. It can be also used with negative articles towards a particular candidate in that supports will read them to point out the false information. The point of confirmation bias is looking at articles to find information that confirms your view or beliefs on a particular candidate or views.

Content Analysis 1 and 2

In PoliCom we were assigned multiple assignments through out the semester that are two content analysis one field research and three news story. In the first content analysis it was comparing two candidates websites (Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio) I reviewed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton website to find information on her views towards immigration. I went on Hillary’s website to see how her website was setup, but to also know where she stands on immigration reform. In the content analysis I did just that by talking about where she stands on immigration reform. The other aspect that I looked at was the layout of her website to see if it has pictures and video about immigration.

 In the second content analysis I gathered 25 articles from the New York Times and analyzed them. I wrote about the pattern the Times used in their articles by reading the articles and headlines to figure out what concept they are in. After, I read the articles I wrote on the concept that the Times mostly wrote about. It was a surprise to me that they mostly wrote about conflict. When the article was about a candidates attribute it would still include conflict between parties and candidates. 

News Story 1,2, and 3

The first news story, the group that I was a part of attended a Bernie Sanders rally in Morehouse College. In this project I was asked to helped Thomas conduct interview and to revise the article to check for any errors. In the second news story, the group attended the John Kasich town hall at Kennesaw University. I wrote the news story about the town hall and conducted four interviews with students and supports that were in attendance.  Some of the questions that I would ask the interviewees were “Do you support Kasich and why?” and also, “What do you think about the comments he made towards women?” In the third news story our group wrote about the state race after Super Tuesday.  Our group conducted an interview with Dr. Timothy Kersey that I provided the interview questions for. Also, I helped co-write the article by adding quotes and paragraphs from the results about Super Tuesday.

Field Research 

The field research project our group was based of the Bernie Sanders speech at his rally in Morehouse. It was about analysis about his words and actions during the speech about the different topics he touched on. My involvement in this particular project I writing the conclusion about the information that we gathered from Sanders speech.

This class got me more involved in American politics, before this class I would glance at the news and not really be fully involved with what was happening about me. I became more involved and aware of candidates views, their campaign strategy, and how news outlets reported information. I could say that I did observe the news more than before, but still not to the best of my ability. I know that I could have emerged myself in the more in observing the political process.