Essay Instructions: Please focus on the resources i will provide to you as main resources and the following questions:
New Technologies, new publics, public spheres? Democracy Fulfilled? The citizen re-empowered?
Professionalization, Refeudalization?
Read political communication encyclopedia article on Americanisation/Professionalization; Selections from Alpha Dogs: The Americans Who Made Political Spin Into a Global Business (2008). Rethinking PR and Democracy, Maloney excerpts BB; Recommended: excerpts from “A Century of Spin” BB
Apply readings to American presidential election. What was the role of the Internet (blogs, social media, campaign finance, setting news agendas)? What kind of trends of professionalization do you see? Revisit Agenda-setting, framing, professionalization, Tabloidization. Give examples, analyze using course concepts.
Harsin “Wikileaks Lessons for Media Theory and Politics” Flow TV (just google it); Manuel Castells, “Communication Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society” http://www.itu.dk/stud/speciale/specialeprojekt/Litteratur/Castells_2007%20-%20Communication%20power%20in%20the%20network%20society.pdf (or google it); Two short online articles on Kony2012Abigail Collazo, “Five Reasons why the Kony 2012 Video is Going Viral.” Social Media Today, March 11, 2012. Available at ttp://socialmediatoday.com/colindelany/467055/five-reasons-kony-2012-video-going-viral; “Lessons from Kony 2012: Changing the world one mouse click at a time” By Elizabeth Stuart , Deseret News (google it!)
Recommended: Harsin and Russell: “Machinima and the French Democracy: Public Address and the Limits of Glocal Protest”
Transnational or Global Publics and Public Spheres?
Nov. 21 ” Civil Society and Public Relations" Mohan J. Dutta-Bergman BB; M. Castells, “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance.” Recommended: “Contesting Global Capital, New Media, Solidarity”. Consider: What is the relationship of civil society to democracy today? What is the role of NGOs? And how do they in some ways defeat the realization of public spheres? But what are, on the other hand, opportunities for new publics/public spheres and the interventions in elite political processes? These questions also draw on last week's readings (Wikileaks, Kony 2012).
•&????;Recommended “Internet and Arab Political Identity”+ “Part I addresses NGOs' experience in drawing on advertising agencies' expertise in awareness-raising campaigns Part II summarizes experience with awareness campaigns aimed at chainging attitude and behavior in poor/largely illiterate communities” BB. 6pages
•&????;Recommended: "Internet and Public Spheres in Developing Countries" BB
Professionalized politics (and citizenship) meets Convergence Culture
Nov. 28 Stephen Coleman , DE Morrison , S. Yates, “The mediation of political disconnection.” In: Brants K, Voltmer K (eds) Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy: Challenging the Primacy of Politics. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 215??"230. Harsin, “The Rumor Bomb; Harsin “That’s Democratainment: Obama Rumor Bombs”;
The New Frontier: Neuroscience, Affect, Attention Economy and Public Life
Dec 5 From Houghton’s Political Psychology, instead read Tiziana TErranova, "Attention Economy and the Brain"; Harsin "Managed Democracy 3.0" ONLY pp 1-7, 27-33; AND "joys of online activism" http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/18/online-activism-internet-campaign-mobilise
. Think about the implications for public life. What would Habermas say?
Dec. 12 Conclusion: recap, discussion of the course, Occupy Movement, Pirate Party, Alternative Globaliztion Movement, etc.
There are faxes for this order.