Political Communication



Prof. Matthew A. Baum Fall 2017

Office: T244 Wednesdays 1:00-3:00 pm

Email: Matthew_Baum@Harvard.edu Location: Sever Hall 111

Office Hours: TBD Phone: 617-495-1291

Faculty Assistant: Jessica Colarassi (Jessica_Colarossi@hks.harvard.edu)

Freshman Seminar 41R: Media in American Politics

Professor Matthew A. Baum

Syllabus

Overview: This course considers the degree to which Americans' political opinions and actions are influenced by the media as well as the influence of the media on public policy. Topics to be covered include the history of the mass media, recent trends in the media, theories of media effects, the implications for politics of changes in media (e.g., the rise of the Internet, social media and partisan media), the ways in which the news shapes the public's perceptions of the political world, campaign communication, how the media affect the manner in which public officials govern, and the general role of the media in the democratic process.

Course Canvas Page

Various course materials (including the syllabus and readings not included in the texts) will be posted here.

Requirements:

(NOTE: This seminar is graded on a SAT/UNSAT basis. There are no letter grades.)

Op-ed articles/blog posts (30% of final evaluation). There will be two short op-ed papers (approximately 600-800 words). Students may pick any subject, so long as it is related to at least one of the topics in the course and write an op-ed or blog post on the topic, taking some position and making their best case for it. As with any newspaper op-ed, the argument should be supported by empirical evidence and must consider potential counter-arguments. Each paper counts for 15% of the final grade.

Group Project 1: Critical Analysis of 2016 Campaign Media Reports (20% of final evaluation). Students, working in teams of two, will select two media reports or ads from the 2016 campaign (presidential or Congressional). They will present the reports to the class and then critique them (assessing their strengths, weaknesses, accuracy, or inaccuracy, likely target audiences, as well as their likely effects on the election campaign in question). Each group will have approximately 15-20 minutes for their presentation and class discussion.

Group project 2: Original Campaign Ad Production (20% of final evaluation). For the group project, teams of students will write and produce two campaign ads, one positive and one negative. The ads must focus on actual or (realistic) potential presidential or congressional candidates for the 2018 or 2020 elections. Students will make short (~5-10 minutes) presentations introducing their ads (i.e., why and how they chose the candidates and issues/topics they utilized, plus any other information they would like to present). They will then show the ads. All students will vote on the most successful ads across multiple dimensions. (More detailed instructions on the campaign ad project will be distributed to students.)

Participation (30% of final evaluation). There are two parts to the participation evaluation:

a. In-class participation in the discussions and summaries of assigned readings (15% of the final evaluation). Each week, 1-2 student(s) will be assigned to verbally summarize the week’s readings for the class and prepare questions for class discussion. Presentations should take no more than 10 minutes in total. (East student will be responsible one weekly reading summary during the semester.)

b. For the final 20-30 minutes of each class session, students, working in teams of two, will participate in a structured debate focused on the debate topic for the week as presented in the syllabus. Students will sign up for slots on the first day of class. We will employ modified Oxford rules. A proposition will be put forward. We will begin by polling the class on the proposition. There will be one “pro” and one “con” team for each debate. Each side will have up to four minutes to make their arguments, followed by up to a two-minute rebuttal of the opposing argument. We will then open the floor to questions and comments from the rest of the group. Following the class discussion we will re-vote the proposition. (15% of the final grade). (Each student will participate in three debates during the semester.)

Readings:

• Graber, Doris A. and Johanna Dunaway. 2014. Mass Media and American Politics, Washington D.C.: CQ Press.

• Asher, Herbert. 2010. Polling and the Public, 8th Edition. Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press.

• Brinkley, Alan. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York: Oxford, 2010

• All other readings are available online.

Class Schedule

1. Course Overview, Introductions, and Discussion of salient news stories from 2016 or 2017 (9/6)

Students should come to class prepared to discuss a news story from the 2016 election or concerning national or state politics in 2017 (online or offline) that was particularly noteworthy to them. Students should introduce the news story, and then discuss why it was salient to them, how in their view the media performed in covering the story, what the public took from the coverage, and what, if any, lesson they individually took from it. Presentations should be informal (no need for heroic preparation) and last 2-5 minutes, to be followed by a brief class discussion.

2. Media Economics & Evolution: technology, regulation and competition (9/13)

Readings:

- Graber & Dunaway, Chapter 2, “Ownership, Regulation, and Guidance of Media, pp. 29-51

- Hamilton, James T. 2003 All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1 (“Economic Theories of News”).

- Gentzkow, Matthew and Jesse M. Shapiro. 2008. “Competition and Truth in the Market for News.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22: 133-154.

- Martin Gilens and Craig Hertzman. "Corporate Ownership and News Bias: Newspaper Coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act." Journal of Politics 62(May): 369-386.

Discussion Topics: Is news a “public good” or a commodity whose content is driven by market considerations? Can it be both? How should news be treated by society? Can public be induced to consume more, and more serious, political news? Should it be?

DEBATE: Proposition: The availability of limitless news and information on the Internet renders obsolete government regulation of media content or access along the lines of the equal access and public interest content rules that governed broadcast media until the 1980s.

3. Soft News. Satirical News. Bad News? (9/20)

Readings:

- Popkin, Samuel. 2006. “Changing Media, Changing Politics.” Perspectives on Politics Issue 2 (June): 327-341.

- Prior, Markus. 2003. “Any Good News in Soft News? The Impact of Soft News Preference on Political Knowledge.” Political Communication 20(April/June): 149-171.

- OPTIONAL (honestly!): Baum, Matthew A. “Soft News and Political Knowledge: Evidence of Absence or Absence of Evidence?” 2003. Political Communication 20 (April/June): 173-190. (If you’re interested in a rejoinder to Prior…)

- Baum, Matthew A. and Angela Jamison. 2011. Soft News and the Four Oprah Effects. 2011. Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media. Jacobs, Lawrence and Robert Shapiro, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Fallows, James. 2011. “Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media.” The Atlantic.

- Xenos, Michael A. and Amy B. Becker. Moments of Zen: Effects of The Daily Show on Information Seeking and Political Learning. Political Communication 26:3: 317-332.

Discussion Topics: Is the blending of news and entertainment good or bad for democracy? Does satirizing the news make better, more informed citizens, or increase cynicism about politics and government? What effects is this trend likely to have on politics and public policy?

DEBATE: Proposition: Satirical news shows are harmful to American democracy because they make viewers more cynical about American politics and political institutions.

4. Media Effects (9/27)

Readings:

- Graber and Dunaway, Chapter 10, “Media Influence on Attitudes and Behavior,” pp. 272-308.

- Chang, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2007). Framing Theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 10, 103–126.

- Druckman, James N. 2000. “The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate Revisited.” Journal of Politics 65(May): 559-71.

- Baum, Matthew A. and Phil Gussin. 2007. “In the Eye of the Beholder: How Information Shortcuts Shape Individual Perceptions of Bias in the Media.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science. 3:1: 1-31.

- Sides, John. 2012. Do Presidential Debates Really Matter? Washington Monthly (September/October 2012)

Discussion Topics: Based on your own understanding of what “democracy”, means, does the U.S. have a “real” democracy or do we have only the illusion of democracy, with voters manipulated to support whatever policies and candidates media and political elites favor? In your view, are citizens too readily influenced by what they encounter in the media? Why or why not?

DEBATE: Proposition: The mass media reflect, far more than cause, prevailing public political attitudes and behaviors

5. Guest Lecture on Franklin Roosevelt’s Contribution to modern political communication by Dr. Cynthia Koch, historian in residence and director of history programming, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation, and Tour of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Suite in Westmorly Hall, Adams House (10/4)

Readings

- Brinkley (whole book [don’t panic…it’s a very short book!])

- Fireside Chat 1: On the Banking Crisis (March 12, 1933) (audio 12:44).

- Eleanor Roosevelt published a syndicated column from 1936-1962, which told of her comings and goings in a folksy way—and warmed people to the policies and personality of the president. The following examples comprising 3 days from the My Day columns November 22-23-24, 1938, include reference to an important civil rights meeting in Birmingham, AL, the Southern Conference on Southern Welfare where she made headline news for facing down Birmingham public safety commissioner Bull Connor (who in 1963 jailed Martin Luther King, Jr.) and praises the conferees for their restraint in opposing what she calls a “local ordinance,” (segregated seating in public gatherings).

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6. Media and Public Opinion Polls (10/11)

Readings:

- Asher (whole book [again, don’t panic…it’s a short book and an easy read!])

Discussion Topics: What in your view is the proper role, if any, of public opinion polling in government and public affairs? How can we improve the use of public opinion polls in the news media in order to (a) help political leaders better understand what the public thinks and wants, and (b) help the public, as well as leaders, better understand what the polls can and cannot tell us about public attitudes?

DEBATE: Public opinion polls do more harm than good for American politics.

FIRST OP-ED/BLOG POST DUE AT START OF SESSION 6

7. Fragmentation, Polarization, and Media Bias (10/18)

Readings:

- Graber and Dunaway, Chapter 12, “Incivility, Negativity, and Bias in the Media”, pp. 343-369.

- “Does the US Media Have a Liberal Bias? – A Discussion of Tim Groseclose’s Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” Perspectives on Politics 10:3(September 2012): 767-785.

- Brendan Nyhan (pp. 767-771)

- Nolan McCarty (pp. 772-774)

- Justin H. Gross, Cosma Rohilla Shalizi and Andrew Gelman (pp. 775-79)

- Nancy L. Rosenblum (pp. 780-782)

- Kathleen Hall Jamieson (pp. 783-785)

- Iyengar, Shanto and Hahn, Kyu S. 2009. Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use. Journal of Communication 59: 19-39.

- Mayer, Frederick W. 2012. “Stories of Climate Change: Competing Narratives, the Media, and U.S. Public Opinion, 2001-2010.” Harvard University, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, Working Paper #D-72.

Discussion Topics: Do you believe the media are biased? If so, how? Is this “good” or “bad” for politics and democracy? What about for political polarization? How do you know bias when you see it? What are the implications for political discourse in America of citizen perceptions of bias in the media?

DEBATE: Proposition: Partisan media are bad for democracy.

8. 2016 campaign news report viewing and evaluation session (10/25)

9. How the Media Cover Politics & Election 2016 (11/1)- Donna Brazile

Readings:

- Graber and Dunaway, Chapter 5, “News Making and News Reporting Routines,” pp. 106-1421 & Chapter 11, “Elections in the Internet Age, pp. 209-342.

- Patterson, Thomas. 1996. “Bad News, Period.” PS: Political Science and Politics 29 (March): 17-20.

- Eshbaugh-Soha, Matthew. “Traditional Media, Social Media, and Different Presidential Campaign Messages.” 2015. In Farrar-Myers, Victoria A. and Justin S. Vaughn, editors, Controlling the Message: New Media in American Political Campaigns (New York: NYU Press), Chapter 7, pp.136-154.

- Stray, Jonathan. 2016. “How much influence does the media really have over elections? Digging into the data” Niemen Lab (1/11/16).

- David Lazer, Matthew Baum, Nir Grinberg, Lisa Friedland, Kenneth Joseph, Will Hobbs, and Carolina Mattsson. 2017. “Combatting Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action,” Final Conference Report (Conference held 17-18 February, 2017).

Discussion Topics: How should politics and elections be covered? How well do the media measure up to this standard? What are the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary media coverage of politics, both in the traditional and online media? What would you anticipate would be the practical beneficial effect political coverage along the lines you suggest?

DEBATE: Proposition: Media coverage of U.S. politics and elections is significantly responsible for polarization and gridlock in Washington D.C.

10. Guest Lecture on Online News and Social Media by Nicco Mele, Director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and former Deputy Director and Associate Publisher of the Los Angeles Times. (11/8)

Readings:

- Bennett, W. Lance. 2012. The Personalization of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 644:1: 20-39.

- Farrell, Henry. 2012. The Consequences of the Internet for Politics. Annual Review of Political Science 15: 35-52.

- Regina G. 2015. “Campaign News in the Time of Twitter.” In Farrar-Myers, Victoria A. and Justin S. Vaughn, editors, Controlling the Message: New Media in American Political Campaigns (New York: NYU Press), Chapter 5, pp. 93-112

- Gladwell, Malcolm. 2010. “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” The New Yorker (October 10).

- Shirky, Clay. 2011. The Political Power of Social Media” Foreign Affairs (January/February).

- Shirky, Clay and Gladwell, Malcolm. 2011. “From Innovation to Revolution” Foreign Affairs (March/April).

Discussion Topics: Do you believe social media represent something fundamentally new and different in the history of media? Why or why not? How influential do you believe social media are? Who uses social media? What interests do they represent? Do you believe the Internet in general, and social media in particular, empower average citizens and so enhance democracy, or do they do the opposite, perhaps providing an illusion of empowerment while only exacerbating the gap in political influence between the haves and have-nots?

DEBATE: Proposition: Social media represent a lot of sound and fury signifying not much (that is, their influence on political and public policy outcomes is greatly exaggerated by political insiders and elites).

11. Campaign Advertising & Persuasion (11/15)

Readings:

- Geer, John G. 2012. "The news media and the rise of negativity in presidential campaigns." PS: Political Science & Politics 45.03: 422-427.

- Kenrick, Douglas. 2012. “The Six Principles of Persuasion.” Psychology Today. Published online 12/8/12).

- Cialdini, Robert. B. 2001. “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion.” Harvard Business Review. Case Study R0109D (October): 72-79.

- “Winning the Media Campaign 2012” Project for Excellence in Journalism

- de Benedictis-Kessner, Justin, Matthew A. Baum, Adam Berinsky, and Teppei Yamamoto. 2016. “Persuasion in Hard Places: Accounting for Selective Exposure When Estimating the Persuasive Effects of Partisan Media.” Harvard and MIT, Typescript.

Discussion Topics: What steps, if any, can/should be taken to increase citizen participation in politics? Is there a meaningful distinction between persuasion and manipulation? What are the implications for democracy if citizens are easily manipulated by elites? Should the government regulate the content of campaign advertising in any way? If so, how?

DEBATE: Proposition: Negative campaign advertising is good for democracy.

12. Influencing Public Policy (11/22)

Readings:

- Graber & Dunaway, Chapter 6, “The Media and Policy Makers,” pp. 142-172) and Chapter 7, “The Struggle for Control: News from the Presidency and Congress,” pp.173-210.

- Gilboa, Eytan. "The CNN effect: The search for a communication theory of international relations." Political Communication 22.1 (2005): 27-44.

- Entman, Robert M. 2003. Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapters 1-2.

- Stromberg, David. “Media and Politics.” Unpublished manuscript, IIES, Stockholm University (February 5, 2015).

Discussion Topics: How much influence do you think the media have on public policy and governance? How much “should” they have? Why?

DEBATE: Proposition: Similar to the U.K., the U.S. should bar all paid media advertising during the last 60 days leading up to an election.

SECOND OP-ED/BLOG POST DUE AT START OF SESSION 12

13. Wrap-up & student produced campaign ad viewing and evaluation session (11/29)

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