POLI 214 - Cyber Politics

An analysis of innovations on the internet to assist candidates running for political office, enhance citizen participation, develop e-Democracy, and organize political protest. Course focuses on theories of cyberpolitics, and examines the effectiveness and ethical character of these persuasive approaches. Topics include an examination of candidate and political party web sites, on-line grassroots organizing, the ascendancy of political web logs (blogs), candidate “meet-ups,” campaign advertisements designed for the web, on-line fundraising, “fake news” sites, sites that parody or satirize candidates running for office, and “attack animations.” Students will utilize Macalester’s course-management software and learn HTML in order to design web-based assignments. Alternate years. (4 Credits)