Professor Andrew Rojecki

Professor Andrew Rojecki starts his lecture by asking students if they care about politics. Most of the students said they simply did not care, and others said they get too anxious watching the news. He talks about “political discourse” which he says is a way of thinking about something. Professor Rojecki says his interest lies in the study of the origins and the effects of political discourse. Also, he speaks of the tea party and its views on government.   

I found the most interesting segment of his lecture was when he talks about people’s concerns for the job market. The reason he gives for America’s loss of jobs is because of globalization. Globalization is pulling jobs away from Americans. I know I am very pessimistic when it comes to this recession. I am also so worried about finding a job after college. It feels like the recession is never ending, but I was still shocked at how many Americans felt the same way I do. His graph displayed that less than ¼ of Americans think we’ve had improvements with our economy. I knew people were worried, but I didn’t think that it was such a big amount of people that were worried. Also, I can relate to the professor’s lecture when he says people get their ideas off of other people. I am guilty of this, I don’t watch the news, but my father does and he tells me what’s going on and keeps me up to date, but he has different way of perceiving things, and if I initially watched, I might perceive them differently and have different opinions. The professor also says we are so distracted by many things and do not have time to watch the news due to all these distractions, and I completely think this is true.

Another thing I found interesting was when the professor said that people watch a news channel like FOX news to reinforce their beliefs already. They already have their views and they are going to select what sounds good to them. This concept relates back to our own class lecture, because we as well talked about framing and salience. This is where you take certain aspects of what you hear and make some things more “salient” then others. This is where you make some messages more noticeable to you and you’d only pay attention to those messages.

The last part of his lecture, he talks about how political discourse works. Professor Rojecki describes people being manipulated by all the stereotypes of politics and uses the term “dog whistle”, which he describes as something being said, without it really being said. This reminded me of our unit, when we talked about nonverbal communication. In lecture, we discussed the functions of non-verbal communication. One of the functions of non-verbal communication is replacing the spoken message and also sending uncomfortable messages that do not want to be verbally spoken.