Welcome to the course “Political Communication in the Age of Surveillance”, an entirely online, asynchronous course.

In this Welcome Message, I will discuss the contents of the course, the readings and other learning material, as well as the grading elements. In case you do not know, asynchronous means, in the context of online teaching, that we will NOT meet at regular times as a group. You will find online all the material you need to success in the course. You will have the flexibility to work whenever you can plan it in your schedule. It is, thus, very important that you regularly (at least once a day) log in to Blackboard Learn in order to keep up to date.

Personal Introduction

My name is Jose Carlos del Ama.

Although I originally come from Spain, I have spent the most important part of my life and academic career in Germany. I received my PhD from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.

Before I came to the United States in 2003, I had been teaching and researching in Spain at the Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona) and in Germany at the above mentioned university.

My emphasis areas of teaching and research are

• Public Opinion,
• Mass Communication Research,
• Filmic Narrative,
• Persuasive Communication and
• New Technologies.

More information about the instructor, you can become in this link:

José Carlos del Ama

Learning Material

The most important content area in the course’s Web-site is dedicated to the “course contents”. Here you can find the online lectures, the readings, and the audiovisual material that you need to succeed in this course. I have divided the course contents in 12 learning units. At this point, only 7 of them are available. To create a Web-site for the course is a tremendous effort that needs a considerable amount of time. I have been working on it for several months – and hope to finish the course contents area in the next weeks. All the material you need for the midterm exam is already available, though. We organize each weekly schedule based on those contents. However, You should start exploring the contents as soon as possible. Since you have to start immediately doing research for the participation in the blogs.
As I said in the syllabus, this online course is reading intense. You will find the contents in three main formats:
Online Lectures (HTML documents)
Readings (mostly PDF documents)
Streaming Media (videos)

In addition to the learning material that you can find in every learning unit, we will intensively work with two books:

Graber, Doris A. and Johanna Dunaway. 2014. Mass Media and American Politics (11^th Edition), Washington D.C.: CQ Press. 

This book is available in CCSA’s bookstore. You can also find some affordable options in Amazon: Mass Media and American Politics

Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, New York: PublicAffairs.

Zuboff’s book is also available in Amazon at a reasonable price: Age of Surveillance Capitalism

These two books will be specially relevant in the second phase of the course, after the midterm exam.

About the Course Contents

We will analyze the relationship between Mass Media and political power. In the first section of the course, we focus on the nature of political power, with special emphasis on the role of public opinion. In a democratic society, there seems to be an agreement that political power flows from public opinion. Walter Lippmann was the first author who systematically studied the triangular relationship between public opinion, political power and mass media. The course explores the actual effects of Mass Media on individual and society, as well as the implication of those effects on the political game. We will pay special attention to the shifting mass communication paradigm brought about by the brutal penetration of new digital technologies.

Goals

This course helps us

• understand what the term “politics” means, as well as the origin and nature of political power.
• Identify the role of public opinion in politics,
• gain a deep insight into the effects of Mass Media on individual, society and politics,
• know the contemporary Media landscape, including regulations and governmental control,
• understand how new digital technologies have changed the rules of the game in contemporary politics,
• become aware of how the digital revolution, in particular social media, might contribute to phenomena like populism, political radicalization, or the shrinking of the private sphere, and what this development implies for the democratic process.

Grading Elements

Examinations
	1st Quiz	20%
	2nd Quiz	20%
	Final Exam	30%
Case Study
	Video Presentation	10%
	Case Study Paper	10%
Participation		10%

Examinations

There will two quizzes and a final exam, which includes the contents of the whole course. Exams will cover material from the corresponding learning units. There will be no make-up exams (except for well documented medical emergencies). All the assessments in this course will take place online, in the Blackboard Vista environment. Please, make sure that you are familiar with the system before the day scheduled for the exams.

Case Study

The case study has two related assignments: the video presentation and the case study paper. First, you should select a topic related to the contents of two of the learning units. In the learning unit of populism, you can choose a contemporary case that studies the phenomena of systemic political corruption (as described by Francis Fukuyama), populist politicians (based on the dimensions of populism discussed in the learning unit: Anti-establishment attitudes, belief in the supremacy of popular sovereignty, or the faith in the homogeneous virtue of the people). The second learning unit relevant to this assignment focuses on News Bias, Polarization, and Misinformation. You can select a contemporary case that illustrates the different types of news bias, the relationship between media and political polarization, or the effect of misinformation on society.

The first assignment is a 5-8 minute video presentation of your findings. In this link, you can learn how to create a video from a power point presentation.

The second assignment is a 10-page paper (double-spaced, Times New Roman size 12) developing the findings of your presentation.

You can find a more detailed description of structure and evaluation of both assignments in this page.

Participation

Your participation grade will depend on your activity in the forums I’ll open during the second section of the course. These forums will focus on your video presentations. I’ll select those that I believe will generate the best discussions. It’s important to read your classmates’ entries and contribute your own comments. The aim is to foster interactive discussions, similar to those in our on-ground classes, where students’ presentations inspire dialogue.

Interaction with the Instructor

Please, use the “Contact the Instructor” area in the course’s main menu to ask questions related to this course. I monitor my Blackboard Learn courses daily, and check regularly your messages.
I will also hold office hours for those students who want/need a face-to-face interaction with the instructor.
Office hours schedule:

• T: 1:30 – 3 pm 
• W: 12:10 am – 1:40 pm
• R: 8:30 – 10:30

You can contact me anytime to make an appointment if you cannot make it during the office hours. We can always schedule virtual (zoom) meetings outside the official office hours.
Please, follow the announcements every day.
Good luck!

Technical Issues with Blackboard Learn

If you have any technical issue with the online learning system, please contact the help-desk at CCSU (860) 832 1720.