The Next Generation of Citizens

by Richard Perloff

During the torrid summer of 2005, the political story that gripped the news media centered on Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper and Karl Rove. Miller’s refusal to reveal her sources – and courage in taking jail over compliance with the prosecutor – stirred the hearts of many who believe that journalists should not compromise the identity of anonymous sources.

The story began when the government sought to discover who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. Disclosing the name of a CIA operative can be a crime, and government prosecutors suspected that New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper knew the identity of the source who leaked the information. Karl Rove, Bush’s key political adviser, was identified as a possible source. The issue pitted aggressive federal prosecutors trying to solve a crime against reporters, striving to defend the principle of upholding promises kept to confidential sources.

This story never gained much of a foothold among the American public, particularly the under-25 circuit, who seemed to utter a collective “Whatever” when teachers or political aficionados began lamenting the Bush Administration’s disrespect for reporters’ rights. Indifference typifies young people’s attitudes toward politics – and indifference may be an overstatement.

Consider that in 1968, the first year of DDB Needham’s political surveys of young people, 60.3% of incoming college freshmen reported an interest in political issues. In 2000, only 28.1% said they were interested.

David T.Z. Mindich, who discusses these findings in a recent book, reports that despite 9/11 and the specter of terrorism, only 15% of 18-24 year-olds bothered to vote in 2002, the lowest proportion during the period of study. Not only is newspaper reading way down (you knew that), but it does not appear that young people are migrating to television news in great numbers (the average age of CNN viewers is about 62) -- or to Internet news sites. Only 11% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they use the Internet to keep up with current events.

You say you’re teaching political communication this fall and you’re thinking the biochemistry of protoplasm might get a bigger rise from your students?

We know how important political communication is. It has as its centerpiece classic democratic values, introduces students to the multi-layered, murky world of bitterly-contested frames, and engages us with its never-ending interplay between idealism and the thirst for power.
Political communication is unique – and complex. What separates it from the related fields of voting behavior and public opinion is not simply the many levels on which it operates (individual citizen, parent-adolescent voter dyad, political community, electoral system), but the philosophical questions that underlie the field. These questions focus on whether political leaders manipulate or are responsive to public attitudes, if the media maintain the status quo or are agents of change, and the role communication plays in public discourse.

It is the latter that defines the field. What makes political communication a distinctive field in the discipline of communication is its fundamental concern with the public sphere: how actions are communicated in public, and how (or whether) individuals are transformed from self-focused actors to publicly-oriented citizens. Just as there cannot be democracy without citizens, as Robert Entman notes, there can be no study of political communication without examination of the role communication plays in defining, warping, changing, or improving the public sphere of life.
This is our challenge. For all their exuberance and zest, young people have no kinship with public space. They inhabit a world of video games, iPods, and cell phones that celebrate the technical virtuosity of the privately-focused individual. The great American experiment that de Tocqueville embraced – in which people of different racial and ethnic heritages mixed and formed civic bonds – was very much a public experience. The public space that contained such mixing is a thing of the past.

With media increasingly fragmented and people tuned into their own media genre, the experience of America participating en masse to high holy days of political experience – Kennedy assassination, moon landing, Watergate, Clinton impeachment -- is as much a part of the past as a Vaughn Meader LP.

And yet professors who teach students political communication do report strange, unexpected signs of life when politics is broached in class -- a weird but unmistakable curiosity and recognition among undergraduates that they are living in politically consequential times. It is our job as educators to nurture this spirit -- to help students realize that politics is not something that happens to everybody else, but is a critical part of their surroundings.

So with school underway, here are one teacher’s ideas on how to get students engaged in political communication:

Confront them with what they don’t know. Far from being embarrassed at their lack of knowledge of public affairs – like who their senator is or why Robert Novak is Darth Vader -- students appreciate the opportunity to acquire useful information. They realize that such knowledge is important, and when you explain nuances of the electoral college or campaign finance reform, they enjoy the newly-acquired clarity that knowledge brings.

Get arguments going. It used to be that just mentioning Clinton and Lewinsky would divide a class and incite arguments between Clinton haters and Clinton fans. (Those were the days!) Nowadays, different issues access strongly-held attitudes. Iraq, Terri Schiavo, and animal rights (the latter shows how broadly the political net can be extended) stir debates. By helping students formulate cogent arguments, you rekindle political debate, a lost art, but an important skill for political communicators.\

Help students understand campaigns. As much as they say they hate politics, students love the excitement of hard-fought campaigns. Bringing in consultants or politicians running for office gets their political adrenaline going. If you are teaching during a presidential campaign, you can illustrate concepts with examples that students can relate to. If not, there are outstanding videotapes and DVDs, such as “Bush’s Brain (the story of Karl Rove) or Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary of the 2000 campaign, that generate discussion.

Ask them to imagine a better political universe. Sometimes idealism is the best cure. Inviting students to envision superior political communication systems helps them focus on the shortcomings of today. Asking them to conceptualize political communication structures that improve on the current system can help them remain optimistic about the future.

In the end, a political communication course is not going to transform students into politicos or make them follow the news more regularly. But it can help them appreciate that the civic world – the public sphere – is something vital, intriguing and even (on occasion) good. It can teach them that communicating politically is not silly or distant or part of another galaxy, but a centerpiece of their world. That doesn’t seem too much to ask of scholars teaching political communication during these treacherous, but important, times.

Richard M. Perloff is professor and director of the Cleveland State University School of Communication and the author of Political Communication: Politics, Press and Public in America. He reads The New York Times and the local city newspaper with his morning coffee every day, no matter where he is or how he feels about political communication.

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