Political Communication with Andrew Rojecki

I watched Andrew Rojecki's lecture on political communication and the Tea Party. Mr. Rojecki covered many different aspects of political issues and how people communicate with and view politics (political disclosure). In the beginning of the lecture, he asks the students the different ways they retrieve their news or if they even retrieve it at all. Later on, he touches on the fact that due to new media and technology, our generation of people have so many options and distractions which prevent us from being aware of the news and recent politics. I had not really thought about it much but, he could not be more right. Politics and the news is so important and something that should be a part of our everyday lives.

I thought the most important and relevant thing Mr. Rojecki touched on was political disclosure. This is the way we think about things. It can be concepts, theories, frames, beliefs, values and emotion. All of those things can be related to what we have learned about in class. He discussed how these things are done with us being unaware, however during a time of crisis these thing actually do become aware. In class and in the additional reading, we recently discussed ethical decision making and moral principles. During the lecture, I was able to find a relationship to political disclosure. As individuals (and it politics) we are responsible for making our own decisions and choosing what we want to believe and what we think is right. Some of the theories/principles that can relate to this could be utilitarianism, the golden mean or end-based/rule-based principles. These require us to form opinions and morals and could be used to form political opinions. 

Another important thing Rojecki talked about was the Tea Party. Personally, I am not too interested in politics and did not know much about the Tea Party. However, I do know there was a lot of media coverage during the tea party, which is an extremely important factor of politics. In certain cases, some people have a hard time forming their own options due to intensive media coverage in politics. In addition, he talked about how Americans have become very pessimistic about the future due to globalization. Although I am not very interested in politics, I do find myself to be pessimistic at times because our economy still isn't doing as well as it has done in the past and the unemployment rate is still fairly high. 

Overall, I feel Mr. Rojecki's lecture allowed me to clearly understand the relationship between politics and communication, as well as see the impact media can have on politics in a negative and positive way.