The Perils and the Promises of New Media in the Political Science Classroom

The rise of the Internet as a source of political news and information has lead many commentators to either celebrate its potential for creating more participatory forums for public political engagement, or to identify it as a contributor to political polarization because it allows groups of the ideologically like-minded to close themselves off to opinions and information with which they disagree. However, the rise of the Internet has irrevocably altered the ways in which Americans consume and interact with political news and information. If political science educators accept that political and civic knowledge is necessary for American democracy to function, then the changes that have occurred in the media environment must be reflected in the political science classroom. Several political scientists have championed the potential of including blogs, social media, and other new media forms in their political science courses; however, there has been little examination of the many challenges that new media poses to the political science educator. Although these challenges are large, they are not insurmountable. Moreover, students must develop a critical analytical approach to new media if they are to develop the civic knowledge needed for participation in a democratic public sphere. In this paper we argue that many students require additional analytical tools with which to evaluate the truth claims made in blogs, candidate’s websites, and social media when they are integrated into the classroom and research assignments. This is based on the authors’ experience integrating new online media content into a political science class about the presidency and congressional elections. Students in this class were assigned to follow a close electoral contest in a U.S. House of Representatives district during the fall of 2010 using new media along with more traditional sources. In previous years, students would consult a reference work (e.g., The Almanac of American Politics); however, the authors — a librarian and a political science faculty member — encouraged students to use new media sources (e.g., blogs, social media) and allocated two class sessions to using online sources and evaluating their claims. The authors found that students’ work using these new media sources could be categorized into four broad types: The Believer, The Cynic, The Opportunistic Surfer, and the Discerning Analyst. The Believer takes all news sources as trustworthy and makes no attempt to either judge the veracity of claims made in information sources, or to situate these sources within the broader context of their research, the course, or the larger civic sphere. The Cynic believes that all political campaigns are untrustworthy and primarily evaluates the ability of a campaign to effectively deceive. The Cynic’s difficulty is similar to that of the Believer in that they also fail to judge the veracity of specific claims made in the sources that they use. The Opportunistic Surfer is an effective and efficient collector of diverse kinds of information; however, they fail to develop a deeper, original analysis. The Opportunistic Surfer frequently engages in what the composition and rhetoric theorist Rebecca Moore Howard calls patchwriting — reproducing source language while only changing a few words. Finally, the Discerning Analyst can navigate through all types of information sources and can appraise the veracity of claims using disciplinary tools and concepts from history, political science and current affairs. The Believer, the Cynic, and the Opportunistic Surfer all pose many questions for political science and civics educators. Truth claims that are not scrutinized on their individual merits make finding consensus in the democratic public sphere difficult, because a great deal of new media is unedited this requires extra attention. Blind, uncritical trust in claims, or total cynicism, makes a very shaky foundation for civic knowledge. However, new media also offers many new participatory opportunities in that students can use opinions and ideas from voices across the ideological spectrum that would have never found a platform in more traditional media outlets (e.g., major daily newspapers, network television news). The authors found that using new media in this manner opens many exciting new avenues for the development of civic knowledge within students, but these opportunities can be fraught with peril if the proper analytical foundations are not built.