2013 Pol Com Syllabus - Department of Politics, New York University

Professor Anna Di Lellio
Class: W 4-6pm
19 West 4th Street
Political Communication
New York University
Department of Politics
POL-GA.1735.002
Fall 2013
Course Description and Objectives:
This course offers an introduction to political communication, a preeminently practical
activity whose role in informing, influencing and legitimizing decisions is crucial to both
domestic and international politics. Ethical aspects of this activity will be mentioned
during the semester as they are applicable, but in general the course looks at political
communication as a distinct field, in which ethical principles and issues of performance
need to be balanced. The course is practically oriented; it will include lectures and
seminar discussions both on scholarly readings and on students’ work.
After an introduction that discusses historical aspects of communication and public
relations in politics, the course looks at fundamental themes of political communication,
such as agenda setting, framing, and branding. The course also looks at relevant media
formats - infotainment for example - or trends - the emotive news - or technology - the
new media. The management of the press office deserves a separate treatment, not
because it is distinct from communication strategy, but for its practical aspects. This
approach is based on the idea that to achieve effective political communication it is
necessary to know how media work in general and in the context of politics, and how
citizens, journalists and politicians make sense of and use political messages.
Requirements:
You are expected to attend class regularly, read all assigned material ahead of class, and
participate actively in class discussions with presentations. Missing classes will gravely
affect your grade. You will be given 3 short written assignments (1500 words max) to
simulate a political communication practice.

Shorter assignments will be given weekly to analyze political speeches, political ads, the
content and the tone of coverage of political events, with the aim of understanding the
perspective of both the audience and the communicators. This fall the NYC mayoral
campaign will offer many opportunities for analysis. The assignments will be discussed
in class.
Grading:
Participation, including short weekly assignments: 25%
Three longer assignments: 25% each
Readings:
Most of the reading material is available online or in the Bobst Library Electronic
Journals database. I will provide copies of chapters from books. I suggest you buy the
following:
Gladstone, Brooke and Josh Neufeld. 2011. The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone
on the Media. Norton and Company.
Polman, Linda. 2010. The Crisis Caravan. What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?
Metropolitan.
Westen, Drew. 2007. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of
the Nation. Public Affairs.
Course Schedule:
I. Introduction to the Course
Scenes from Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson 1998) or “how to create a virtual war as
damage control strategy.”

I. The Influencing Machine?
Ewen, Stuart. 1996. PR! A Social History of Spin. Basic Books [Chapter 8 “Unseeing
Engineers: Biography of an Idea,” pp. 146-173; Ch. 13 “The New Deal and the Publicity
of Social Enterprise,” pp. 247-287]
Gladstone, Brooke and Josh Neufeld. 2011. The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone
on the Media. Norton and Company.
Morris, Errol. 2011. Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography)
Penguin: Chapter 4 “Photography and Reality/Captioning, Propaganda and Fraud,” pp.
123-220
II. The Influencing Old Media
Druckman, James N. 2000. “The Power of Television Images: The First Kennedy-Nixon
Debate Revisited.” Journal of Politics 65 (May): 559-71.
-----------------------. 2005. “Media Matter: How Newspapers and Television News Cover
Campaigns and Influence Voters,” Political Communication, Vol. 22: 463-481.
Groeling, Tim. 2008. “Who’s the Fairest of them All? An Empirical Test for Partisan Bias
on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News.” Presidential Studies Quarterly.
III. The Gamesmanship of Communication
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. 1992. Dirty Politics. Deception, Distraction, and Democracy
Oxford University Press [Part IV. “Accountability, Engagement and Democracy,” pp.
203-266]
Westen, D. 2007. The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the
Nation. Public Affairs.
Film: The Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (Stefan Forbes 2007)

IV. Agenda Setting
David Plouffe The Audacity to Win. The Inside Story and Lessons of Barak Obama;s
Historic Victory, Viking, 2009 [“Building Block,” pp. 55-83; “It’s the Economy, Stupid,”
323-342, and “Plumbers and Radicals,” 342-361]
Film: The War Room (Chris Hegedus 1993)
V. Framing the News
Brewer, Paul R. 2002. “Framing, Value Words, and Citizens’ Explanations of Their Issue
Opinions,” Political Communication, Vol. 19: 303-316
Dhavan, Shah, Watts Mark, Domke David and Fan David. 2002. “News Framing and
Cueing of Issue Regimes. Explaining Clinton’s Public Approval in Spite of Scandal,
Public Opinion Quarterly (66): 339-370.
Fung Archon, David Weil, Mary Graham and Elena Fagotto. 2004. The Political
Economy of Transparency: What makes disclosure policies effective? John Kennedy
School of Government Harvard.
Johnson Peter T. 1993. “How I Turned a Critical Public into a Useful Consultant.”
Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb:138-146.
Lawrence, Regina. 2000. “Game-Framing the Issues: Tracking the Strategy Frame in
Public Policy News,” Political Communication, Vol. 17: 93-114.
Luther, Catherine A. and Xiang Zhou. 2005. “Within the Boundaries of Politics: News
Framing of SARS in China and the United States,” Journalism and Mass Communication
Quarterly, Vol. 82 (4): 857-872.

VI. Framing the candidates (Branding)
Carlin, Diana B. and Kelly L. Winfrey. 2009. “Have You Come a Long Way, Baby?
Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Sexism in 2008 Campaign Coverage,” Communication
Studies, vol. 60 (4): 326-343.
Fahey, Anna Cornelia. 2007. “French and Feminine: Hegemonic Masculinity and the
Emasculation of John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Race,” Critical Studies in Media
Communication, Vol. 24 (2): 132-150
Scammell, Margaret. 2007. “Political Brands and Consumer Citizens: The Rebranding of
Tony Blair” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 611
(May): 176-192.
Film: Our Brand is Crisis (Rachel Boynton 2005)
VII. The Press Office
Siegal, Allan (Edelman Family Fellow, Former Assistant Managing Editor, New York
Times) 2007. Secrets about Secrets: The Backstage Conversations between Press and
Government. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
Working Paper Series
Sullivan, Marguerite H. A Responsible Press Office
U.S. Department of State Office of International Information Programs
http://usinfo.state.gov
“Live from the White House: Making the News,” International Journal of the Press/
Politics 16 (2) 2011: 272-283.
VIII. Importance of infotainment
Baird Julia. 2005. Soft Power and Hard Views: How American Commentators are
Spreading over the World’s Opinion Pages. The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press,
Politics and Public Policy Working Paper Series.

Matthew A. 2005. “Talking the Vote: Why Presidential Candidates Hit the Talk Show
Circuit” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Apr): 213-234
Roderick Hart and Johanna Harteliu. 2007. “The Political Sins of Jon Stewart,” Critical
Studies in Media Communication, vol. 24, 3, August: 263-272
Bennett, Lance W. “Critical Forum. Relief in Hard Times: A Defense of Jon Stewart’s
Comedy in an Age of Cynicism” ibid.
IX. Persuasion Power of the Emotive media
Gilboa, Eytan. 2005. “ The CNN Effect: The Search for a Communication Theory of
International Relations,” Political Communication, Vol. 22: 27-44.
Gourevitch. Philip. 2010. “Alms Dealers.” The New Yorker. October 11.
Johansen, Morgen S. and Mark R. Joslyn. 2008. “Political Persuasion During Times of
Crisis: The Effects of Education and News Media on Citizens’ Factual Information About
Iraq,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 85 (3): 591-608
Polman, Linda. 2010. The Crisis Caravan. What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?
Metropolitan.
Rothmyer, Karen (Contributing Editor, The Nation). 2011. They Wanted Journalists to
Say ‘Wow’ How NGOs Affect U.S. Media Coverage of Africa. Joan Shorenstein Center on
the Press, Politics and Public Policy Discussion Paper Series
Zelizer Barbie. 2005. Death in Wartime: Photographs and the “Other War” in
Afghanistan. The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
Working Paper Series.
X. New Media
Peter Maas, “How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets” The NewYork Times
Magazine, August 13, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?_r=0
“Komen learns power of social media: Facebook, Twitter fueled fury” The Los Angeles
Times, February 3, 2012
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/02/facebook-twitter-fueled-furyagainst-in-susan-g-komen-for-the-cure-.html
Sean Sullivan, “What Twitter has meant for politics (and what it hasn’t),” The
Washington Post March 21 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/03/21/what-twitter-has-meantfor-politics-and-what-it-hasnt/
Bai Matt. 2007. The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake
Democratic Politics Penguin Press [pp. 23-48; 67-91 and 94-122]
Baum, Matthew and Tim Groeling. 2008. “New Media and the Polarization of American
Political Discourse,” Political Communication, 25: 345-365.
Chadwick, Andrew. 2011. “The Political Information Cycle in a Hybrid News System:
The British Prime Minister and the “Bullygate” Affairs” International Journal of Press/
Politics 16 (1): 3-29
Geer, John (Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University). 2010
Fanning the Flames: The News Media’s Role in the Rise of Negativity in Presidential
Campaigns. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
Discussion Paper Series
Nyaira, Sandra (Zimbabwean Political Journalist) 2009. Mugabe’s Media War: How New
Media Help Zimbabwean Journalists Tell Their Story. Shorenstein Center on the Press,
Politics and Public Policy Discussion Paper Series
O’Connor, Rory (Sagan Fellow, President of Globalvision). 2009. Word of Mouse:
Credibility, Journalism and Emerging Social Media. Joan Shorenstein Center on the
Press, Politics and Public Policy. Discussion Paper Series