RHE 330E: Democracy and the Media Time: MWF 10-11am Location: PAR 104 Forum:http://instructors.cwrl.utexas.edu/longaker/forum/7 Instructor: Mark Garrett Longaker Office: Parlin 12 Office Phone: 471-8725 Office Hours: MWF 11am-1pm
Course Description:
Democratic citizens need to talk with other democratic citizens—about issues, about policy, about public morality, virtue, and the occasional scandal. In a large modern society, this talk happens through media. Our democratic conversation happens in newspapers, on the television, in internet chatrooms, and over the radio. This class will examine how contemporary media affect our ability to act as democratic citizens, to publicly discuss important issues, and particularly to hold elections for public office. We will begin by reading theories about what kinds of public discourse are necessary to a functional modern democracy, and we will then read various arguments about how these media affect the American democratic effort. Students will each pick one medium and throughout the semester will examine its democratic potential and its present use in public election campaigns. This is a class in rhetorical analysis, which means that students will learn how to closely scrutinize efforts at persuasion and to examine their efficacy, their purposes, their uses, and their results.
