CAS 530 – Political Communication and the Media

Making Sense of Politics in the Age of Donald Trump

This course is geared in some ways around the question of “What, in our media ecology, made Donald Trump possible?” So rather than explore the genres of campaign discourse, for example, or the history of campaigns, we’re going to look at the mediated world citizens inhabit, and how that influences, and is influenced by, institutional, cultural, and individual actors. The class concludes by getting into issues that are both new and continuing, albeit in different technological forms. Throughout, we are interested in the relationships among and between citizenship, technologies, rhetoric, and politics.

Course Objectives

• To take a rhetorical perspective on the media, audiences, political actors, institutions and processes that comprise our national politics;
• With specific emphasis on the broad media landscape and the theories that help us make sense of it;
• To place our current political environment in historical context;
• To focus on the elements of civic culture and citizenship.