political

  • Theory of change

    • A detailed explanation of how and why a particular change is expected to occur in a specific context.

    • Outlines the steps, interventions, and strategies that lead to desired outcomes, highlighting the necessary assumptions and conditions for success

    • it serves as a roadmap to understand how actions can lead to broader societal or policy shifts, providing clarity on objectives, target audiences, and the mechanisms for achieving change.

  • Components:

  • Inputs: Resources such as funding, time, and staff expertise. 

  • Activities: Actions taken, like organizing events, lobbying, or running social media campaigns.

  • Outputs: Direct results of activities, such as the number of petitions signed.

  • Outcomes: Intermediate changes, e.g., increased public awareness or shifts in community attitudes.

  • Impact: Long-term change, e.g., a new law or policy enacted. 

  • Lobbying

    • Before the 1970s in America, it was extremely limited and mostly ineffective

    • Companies hired lobbyists to encourage Congress to pass or reject laws in their favour such as relaxing labor-restricting laws

    • Lobbyists encourage relationships between corporations and politicians

  • powerful & limited media effects model

    • Powerful effects model

      • Hypodermic needle method 

    • Limited effects

      • People process messages based on what they believe or have previously seen and the effects of media are much more limited

  • Persuasion

    • Communication using arguments to change or reinforce attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors

    • Rational or emotional 

  • Persuasion buckets - driving people into three buckets of thought so that a campaign can best target them

    • Mobilization

      • Strong supporters of the candidate

    • Opposition

      • Voting for the other candidate

    • Persuasion

      • Valuable indecisive they can be persuaded since they are undecided  

  • Framing

    •  How an issue is communicated (ie discussing the financial effects of the school funding bill instead of how it will affect the school)

  • agenda setting

    • Influencing how people consider issues and their importance by favouring coverage of certain issues over others 

  • agenda cutting

    • Exclusion of topics based on not being sensational enough (celebrity gossip over policy change)

  • priming 

    • Media defining certain terms by which politicians will be judged

  • selective exposure

    • Seeking out new sources that confirm already held beliefs contributes to a growing polarization

  • Presidential debates

    • Public events where candidates go head to head over important issues

    • Can be moderates or an open forum where citizens as questions

  • political ads

    • An ad on any mass media platform showing a candidate or a platform

  • political spots

    • TV commercials that present a candidate or express views on a candidate or views

  • Political communication

    • The communication tools used in the governance of politics, governance, and public policy

  • Advocacy campaigns

    • Efforts to change public opinion for a certain cause or candidate

  • Media effects

    • 1800s-1940s saw a fear of powerful media effects

    • 1940s-1970s “limited effects” era

    • 1980s- current further studies and ideas

  • Social science research 

  • People’s Choice Study (1940)

    • Surveys were conducted during the FDR v Wendie Winkle election in Ohio over the election to study how media affected people's political beliefs

      • The majority of people supported FDR and those people were more likely to seek positive stories which reaffirmed their belief that he was good 

  • central /peripheral routes to persuasion

    • Elaboration likelihood model of whether things are processed centrally aka highly rational and cognitive route or peripheral aka taking shortcuts with less thinking

  • Agenda melding

    • Individuals combine personal preferences and views with what they see in the media

  • Horizontal/vertical media

    • Horizontal media is consumed across the audience without a hard viewing structure (driven by algorithms) and where consumers and producers aren't 2 entirely different groups

    • Vertical media with a traditional hierarchical structure such as newspapers with a clear difference between producers and consumers

    • Disequilibration can come from vertical media

      • Disequilibration can occur when someone's beliefs are questioned, and to restore balance, they often turn to media that supports their beliefs. It's a feedback loop where a challenge to one's views leads to the seeking of media that helps reaffirm them, thereby reducing the cognitive discomfort caused by the challenge.

  • 6 elements of news

    • Timeliness 

    • Impact or  magnitude 

    • Prominence 

    • Proximity 

    • Unusalness or oddness

    • Conflict or controversy

  • 6 principles of Persuasion

    • Reciprocity

    • Scarcity

    • Authority

    • Consistency 

    • Liking

    • Consensus 

  • 2 step-flow model

    • Opinion leaders take in information from a source and then share it with their followers