Week
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Topics
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Readings
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Questions
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1
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Introduction
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Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of communication, 58(4), 707-731.
Perloff, M. (2013). Political communication: Politics, press, and public in America. Routledge. Chpater 1
McNair, B. (2017). An introduction to political communication. Routledge. Chapter 1.
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What is political communication? How do different forms of media affect politics and vice versa? How can we study social phenomena related to political communication?
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2
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Politics-Media Relationship
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Street, J. (2010). Mass media, politics and democracy. Macmillan. Chapter 5.
Hadland, A., & Zhang, S. I. (2012). The “paradox of commercialization” and its impact on media-state relations in China and South Africa. Chinese Journal of Communication, 5(3), 316-335.
Dragomir, Marius. (2018). “Control the money, control the media: How government uses funding to keep media in line.” Journalism19 (8): 1131–48.
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What functions does the press serve in society? How do the press and the state interact with each other? Does commercialization reshape media-state relations?
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3
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Normative Perspectives
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Christians, C. G., Glasser, T., McQuail, D., Nordenstreng, K., & White, A. (2010). Normative theories of the media: Journalism in democratic societies. University of Illinois Press. Cha. 2-3
Ogbebor, B. (2020). Media Policy, Democracy and Theories of the Press. In British Media Coverage of the Press Reform Debate (pp. 53-75). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
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How “should” the media system be controlled and operated? What is the interrelation between communicative (philosophical) traditions, democratic models, and journalistic roles?
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4
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Media Effects
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Oliver, M. B., Raney, A. A., & Bryant, J. (Eds.). (2019). Media effects. New York, NY: Routledge. Chapters 2 and 7.
Scheufele, D. A. (2000). Agenda-setting, priming, and framing revisited: Another look at cognitive effects of political communication. Mass communication & society, 3(2-3), 297-316.
Masullo, G. M. (2023). A new solution to political divisiveness: priming a sense of common humanity through Facebook meme-like posts. New Media & Society, 14614448231184633.
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How does the consumption of media content affect individuals’ beliefs and behaviors? How can we measure media effects? Do media effects vary across individuals?
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5
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Brainstorming Session on Term Papers
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No assigned readings
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Students need to come with a research proposal (2 pages) that specifies the research question(s), a brief review of the literature, and the contributions of this project. Students will take turn sharing their thoughts and receiving feedbacks from the professor and their peers.
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6
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Interpersonal Communication of Politics
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Flanagin, A. J. (2017). Online social influence and the convergence of mass and interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 43(4), 450-463.
Matthes, J., Knoll, J., Valenzuela, S., Hopmann, D. N., & Von Sikorski, C. (2019). A meta-analysis of the effects of cross-cutting exposure on political participation. Political Communication, 36(4), 523-542.
Harff, D., & Schmuck, D. (2023). Influencers as empowering agents? Following political influencers, internal political efficacy and participation among youth. Political Communication, 40(2), 147-172.
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Do daily interpersonal interactions affect people’s political behaviors? If so, how? What does cross-cutting exposure mean? Does cross-cutting exposure always discourage people from taking part in politics?
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7
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Spring Break
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Holiday
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Holiday
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8
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Mass Media
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Rodrigo-Ginés, F. J., Carrillo-de-Albornoz, J., & Plaza, L. (2024). A systematic review on media bias detection: What is media bias, how it is expressed, and how to detect it. Expert Systems with Applications, 237, 121641.
Groeling, T. (2013). Media bias by the numbers: Challenges and opportunities in the empirical study of partisan news. Annual Review of Political Science, 16, 129-151.
Fischer, R., & Jarren, O. (2024). The platformization of the public sphere and its challenge to democracy. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 50(1), 200-215.
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What is media bias? Does media bias necessarily harm democracies? What are the different ways to measure media bias? Which measurement is most convincing?
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9
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Social Media
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Gil de Zúñiga, H., Weeks, B., & Ardèvol-Abreu, A. (2017). Effects of the news-finds-me perception in communication: Social media use implications for news seeking and learning about politics. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 22(3), 105-123.
Rosen et al. (2022). The Social Media Debate. Routledge. Chapters 7-8.
Garrett, R. K. (2017). The “echo chamber” distraction: Disinformation campaigns are the problem, not audience fragmentation. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 370-376.
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How does the emergence of social media change the way people consume news and information? What does social media impact democracies, either positively or negatively?
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10
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Political Elites
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Haselmayer, M., Meyer, T. M., & Wagner, M. (2019). Fighting for attention: Media coverage of negative campaign messages. Party Politics, 25(3), 412-423.
Newman, B., Merolla, J. L., Shah, S., Lemi, D. C., Collingwood, L., & Ramakrishnan, S. K. (2021). The trump effect: an experimental investigation of the emboldening effect of racially inflammatory elite communication. British Journal of Political Science, 51(3), 1138-1159.
Cervi, L., Tejedor, S., & Blesa, F. G. (2023). TikTok and political communication: The latest frontier of politainment? A case study. Media and communication, 11(2), 203-217.
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How do political messages from elites affect people’s attitudes toward social groups or policy issues? Why do elite politicians frequently appeal to negative campaigning? Do political campaigns effectively affect voters’ candidate choices?
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11
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Social Movements
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Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. (2000). Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual review of sociology, 26(1), 611-639.
Knüpfer, C., Hoffmann, M., & Voskresenskii, V. (2022). Hijacking MeToo: Transnational dynamics and networked frame contestation on the far right in the case of the ‘120 Decibels' campaign. Information, Communication & Society, 25(7), 1010-1028.
Liang, H., & Lee, F. L. (2023). Opinion leadership in a leaderless movement: discussion of the anti-extradition bill movement in the ‘LIHKG’web forum. Social movement studies, 22(5-6), 670-688.
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What does framing mean, and why does it matter? What are the core framing tasks according to Benford and Snow (2000)? What are the common patterns of political communication in different kinds of activism?
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12
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Workshop on Data and Methods
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No assigned readings
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Students need to come to class with a proposal that discusses the data and methods they will use in their projects. After their presentation (about 10 minutes), they will have a QA session where comments and questions will be provided.
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13
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China and State Censorship
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King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2013). How censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression. American political science Review, 107(2), 326-343.
Lee, S. Y. (2016). Surviving online censorship in China: Three satirical tactics and their impact. The China Quarterly, 228, 1061-1080.
Luo, Z., & Li, M. (2024). Participatory censorship: How online fandom community facilitates authoritarian rule. New Media & Society, 26(7), 4236-4254.
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Do social networking platforms necessarily support liberation and empowerment of the marginalized? What does the Chinese government try to achieve by imposing censorship? To what extent is state censorship “successful” in China?
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14
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Framing LGBTQ Rights
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Zheng, Y., & Chan, L. S. (2020). Framing same-sex marriage in US liberal and conservative newspapers from 2004 to 2016: Changes in issue attributes, organizing themes, and story tones. The Social Science Journal, 1-13.
Findor, A., Hruška, M., Gould, J. A., Hlatky, R., Tomková, Z., & Sirota, M. (2023). Framing effects, social norm perception, and tolerance of lesbian and gay individuals: Experimental evidence from Slovakia. Journal of Homosexuality, 70(4), 729-753.
Sun, X., Wang, Y. S., & McLeod, D. M. (2024). National independence versus traditional culture: Framing the same-sex marriage movement and countermovement in Taiwan. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 29(4), 1045-1063.
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What are the common policy frames proposed by pro- and anti-LGBTQ rights activists? How do policy frames of LGBTQ rights in Taiwan show different features from those observed in the Global North? How do frames affect people’s policy attitudes toward LGBTQ rights?
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15
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Running as Female Candidates
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Herrnson, P. S., Lay, J. C., & Stokes, A. K. (2003). Women running “as women”: Candidate gender, campaign issues, and voter-targeting strategies. The Journal of Politics, 65(1), 244-255.
Bauer, N. M., & Santia, M. (2022). Going feminine: Identifying how and when female candidates emphasize feminine and masculine traits on the campaign trail. Political Research Quarterly, 75(3), 691-705.
Russell, A., Macdonald, M., & Hua, W. (2023). Sit Still, Talk Pretty: Partisan Differences Among Women Candidates’ Campaign Appeals. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 1-17.
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Does gender matter in running for office? What factors result in the persistent gender gap in political ambition? What strategies do female candidates adopt for greater electoral success?
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16
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Social Media and Trump’s Presidency
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Clarke, I., & Grieve, J. (2019). Stylistic variation on the Donald Trump Twitter account: A linguistic analysis of tweets posted between 2009 and 2018. PloS one, 14(9), e0222062.
Wells, C., Shah, D., Lukito, J., Pelled, A., Pevehouse, J. C., & Yang, J. (2020). Trump, Twitter, and news media responsiveness: A media systems approach. New Media & Society, 22(4), 659-682.
Ross, A. S., & Caldwell, D. (2020). ‘Going negative’: An appraisal analysis of the rhetoric of Donald Trump on Twitter. Language & communication, 70, 13-27.
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Why does former US President Donald Trump rely heavily on Twitter? What are the characteristics of Trump’s messages on social media? What are the political goals he tries to achieve by adopting certain styles of political communication?
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17
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Reading Week
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Reading Week
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No class but please sign up for online meetings with the instructor
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18
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Final Presentation
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Please read the papers of other students and provide comments to others in class
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Presentation of final projects
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Attendance and Participation (30%)
Blogs (40%)
Final Paper (20%)
Paper Presentation (10%)
Attendance and Participation (30%): Your preparation, presence, and participation are crucial. Please complete the required readings, be on time for each class, bring all relevant readings, and contribute energetically to the class. Your class participation grade will be assessed based on attendance and your contributions to discussions and group activities. Please note that unexcused absences will count heavily against your grade. An absence will be excused only with documentation of medical necessity or with prior approval from the professor.
Blogs (40%): On several weeks, you will interact with fellow group members through an online political blog. Blogs are an opportunity to engage with course material and apply it to real-world politics and political communication. It is also an opportunity for you to engage with your fellow classmates. The blogs are integrated into our learning platform, where you will receive instructions about how to post and what questions to blog about. Only the 8 best blog grades (out of 12) will be counted toward your final grade.
Your task will be to respond to the prompt by writing your own initial post in response to the question by Friday midnight, as well as reply to other students’ posts at least twice by 10 am Monday. You will be graded on your initial post and your replies on a scale from 1-5.
The blog assignment should contain the following:
1. An initial post that addresses the question directly and concisely (300-400 words by Friday midnight or sooner)
2. A minimum of 2 thoughtful, engaging and respectful replies to the posts of fellow group members (your choice of who you respond to); these are typically shorter than the initial post (100-200 words).
3. Initial posts and replies should present clear positions or arguments, supported by fact-based evidence and insights from readings, discussions, news articles and other sources. A great blog post will bring in additional evidence and/or link to reputable online resources to support your post.
Please note that all discourse should be civil and respectful. We encourage thoughtful disagreement, but like all blog posts, you should back up your argument with evidence. No ad-hominem or personal attacks will be tolerated.
Final Paper (20%) and Paper Presentation (10%): At the end of the semester, students need to write a research paper that discusses topics related to political communication. The paper should include: research questions, literature review, data and methods, results, implications and conclusions. The papers should be about 20-25 pages, double-space. Students will present their findings in Week 18
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No assigned textbook for this course since our weekly readings consist of journal articles and book chapters
Reference Materials
Wolfsfeld, G. (2022). Making sense of media and politics: Five principles in political communication. Routledge.
Kaye, D. (2019). Speech police: The global struggle to govern the Internet. New York: Columbia Global Reports.
Oliver, M. B., Raney, A. A., & Bryant, J. (Eds.). (2019). Media effects. Routledge.
Ott, B. L., & Dickinson, G. (2019). The Twitter presidency: Donald J. Trump and the politics of white rage. Routledge.
Perloff, M. (2017). The dynamics of political communication. Routledge.
Phillips, Whitney, and Ryan M. Milner. (2017). The ambivalent Internet: Mischief, oddity, and antagonism online.Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Hayes, Danny, and Lawless, Jennifer L.. (2016). Women on the run: Gender, media, and political campaigns in a polarized era. New York: Cambridge University Press
Johnston, H., & Noakes, J. A. (Eds.). (2005). Frames of protest: Social movements and the framing perspective. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
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