It's a Small World

In addition to looking at online news sources and television advertisements, you will be encoraged to take a look at some (English language) international newspapers to get a sense of how they might be covering the election differently, and how that coverage might be informed by different definitions of politics, argument, and the public sphere.

In the next few days, I'll add a colletion of links to international newspapers to the linkroll in the right margin. For now, Dr. Andrew Cline's News Media Sources is a good place to start for a wealth of news resources. We'll also be discussing some of Cline's materials on rhetoric and democracy in the next few days (I'll provide a specific assignment when the time comes).

You may also have noticed that I've changed the name of the blog from Democracy Matters to, temporarily at least, Rhetoric and Democracy. I decided to cahnge the name after I learned that Golden State Warriors basketball player, Adonal Foyle, already has an organization named Democracy Matters (here's a New York Times article, if you're interested). His organization promotes many of the same concerns that will be addressed in this course, including the problem of campaign finance reform.