My last class in grad school is political communication, which seems fitting. The professor is a communication director on the Hill with a wealth of experience in Texas politics. He may be a liberal Democrat, but liberals from Texas are generally fun.

Throughout the class, we’ve had numerous professionals come to class–a pollster, micotargeter, VP at an agency, new media strategist, an a couple of communications people from advocacy groups. Last night Amy Walker from the Hotline and  Mike Allen from Politico visited. They were by far the best speakers  that we’ve had.

Walker and Allen led a Q&A, which at the graduate level is far more interesting than a lecture. Allen stayed for the entire class. After two hours, the discussion veered towards our media viewing habits. He started asking about what blogs we read, if we watch TV other than Stewart and Colbert, and how much time we spend reading the news all day.

Then he pulled out his BlackBerry and started taking notes.

Suddenly, it started feeling like an informal focus group of twentysomethings and their political and media habits.

The interesting thing was that our habits weren’t that different from national averages. While we all read different blogs that vary with out individual interests, Drudge, the WaPo and other popular publications topped the list.

If you read Politico and ever come across a reference to an unidentified group of graduate students from American University, I’m the outspoken conservative.

The Editors at American Heritage Dictionary put a list together of words every high school graduate should know. How do you measure up?

There are some fun words on there. Some I vaguely remember from Mr. Browder’s weekly vocab quizzes, and some I don’t.

Since communication folk must write at a seventh or eighth grade level, are we purposely hurting the country by dumbing down our language? I could never use any of those words in professional writing.

They’re fun and glamorous. They get lots of attention, yet it always ends badly. Here’s another example of why it’s bad to use celebrities and athletes as marketing ploys…

Nike Suspends Release of Shoe Tied to Michael Vick
Football Star’s Future as Endorser in Limbo After Indictment

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Nike is suspending the release of a new shoe tied to Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who was indicted in relation to a dog-fighting ring earlier this week. The Nike Air Zoom Vick V football shoe was scheduled for a late August release. In a statement issued today, the marketer said: “Nike is concerned by the serious and highly disturbing allegations made against Michael Vick and we consider any cruelty to animals inhumane and abhorrent. We do believe that Michael Vick should be afforded the same due process as any citizen; therefore, we have not terminated our relationship.” For the full story, see http://adage.com/article?article_id=119409– Jeremy Mullman

Just don’t do it.

Even though I’m the consumate girly-girl, I absolutely love to camp and spend time outdoors. Growing up, we spent most of our summer vacations traipsing around state and national parks in the South. The draw of camping has always been to get away from everything. It’s wonderful to pitch a tent next to a mountain stream and just play card games with family members or read a stack of books.

Now KOA’s are offering free wi-fi.

This isn’t camping. This is just like hauling all of your junk into a giant RV, parking it at a campsite and looking at the mountain stream from your air conditioned vehicle.

According to the KOA spokesman:

Jef Sutherland, vice president of information services for Kampgrounds of America, said that campers not only want to stay in touch with family and friends, but they also want to manage online banking transactions and check in with the office.

It’s great to be connected to the world all of the time and keep up with developing events as they happen, but we need rest and vacations. We need to get away from the office and the online bank statements. Technology isn’t crucial to existing, but vacations are. No wonder we’re more stressed out and overworked as a culture. We no longer rest even on vacations.

Today’s WaPo has an interesting article on how younger generations are learning visually rather than textually.

Visual literacy will trigger changes across all fields. Currently, educators and librarians are grappling with teaching kids who learn more through images and graphics rather than words and books. As these kids get older, these changes will ripple across the workforce.

This directly affects marketing and communication when considering the purchasing power that tweens have on the market. As these kids age, can they be reached through traditional mediums?

We covered a bit of this in my Theory class when discussing edutainment communication. There are numerous projects out there trying to design video games for health and education programs. The rationale makes sense. If you can make learning fun on a platform that kids are likely to use, you might change behavior.

It also draws an interesting parallel to older generations who learn textually. It’s often a difficult sell to convince management levels that visuals, graphics and interactive web tools aren’t just fun and trendy, but the way that younger generations absorb information.

It also presents a difficult problem when trying to reach wider audiences with messages. How do you create PR campaigns that are targeting two completely different audiences that consume media in radically different ways? Not only is this another reason why microtargeting is so important, but it shows how much our society has changed with technology.

Thanks to Raee for pointing out the Fairness Doctrine vote today. I’ve been moving and missed it.

Since I’m in the communications field, this is an issue that I’ve been following. I was shocked when I heard that it was being floated around again. The Fairness Doctrine was pointless when there were only 3 networks running 30 minute news shows once  a day. The concept of bringing it back now is laughable. I can’t imagine how many groups would sue to challenge that law.

Raee questions if this is a Republican or Democrat move. I think it’s neither. It’s an elite vs. grassroots move (or country club vs. Sam’s Club as someone suggested on TechRepublican). As we’ve seen with Trent Lott’s recent comments about talk radio and Nancy Pelosi’s general disdain for average Americans, this was an attempt for Congress to essentially control the message in a media saturated enivronment.

This is my soapbox message, but with a resurgance in grassroots activity, the American people can now hold Congress and the President accountable. We saw it with immigration reform, and we’ll continue to see it used more and more in the future. The Internet democratize politics, and I’m convinced that grassroots politics will be more important than ever in the future.  Congress can’t bully Americans with legislation anymore, and they aren’t very happy about it.

A while back, I mentioned that Indoctrinate U is being screened around the country and assumed that the UT story was in it since Bethany and Sukhmani were featured in the trailer. 

Over the weekend, the promotion team sent out an alert with press coverage. I was completely surprised to read this article in American Spectator.

Now that I understand strategic communications a lot more, I’m shocked that we made that connection when leaking the “scandal” orginally. I remember sitting in a strategy meeting with a few other CR members trying to convince them to link the Issues Commitee’s racial slurs with the black face incident at Kappa Sigma the previous year. I had included it in the press release and fought vigorously for it to stay. Looking back at the situation, we should have exploited that angle more. Maloney was really the only other person to pick up on that connection despite all the media that we got. Actually, if we had to do it all over again, I’d bypass the MSM completely  and go straight to bloggers. It really was Bill Hobbs, Glenn Reynolds and Adam Groves who got traction on the story. At the time, I happened to attend an event with Knoxville “celeb” journalist Gene Patterson and mentioned it to him to see if there was any interest in the story and ended up feeding it to the media first.

It still surprises me that such a ragtag group of people managed to get our story in the press and even featured in a documentary like Brainwashing 101, which became Indoctrinate U. At the time, none of us had any experience or resources. Just goes to show, always follow your instincts.

What happens when I write about videogames based on The Office and keep up with my responsibilities at TechRepublican? I miss a continued debate with Erin and Elyzabethe over the issue of framing abortion.

Now, I have  lot of respect for the two of them. They’re incredibly smart, and we all have very nerdy but fascinating conversations about communication theory and technology with a few other classmates. Maybe we’ll be the technology version of the The Inklings one day.

However, I still disagree with them. This doesn’t stem from my views on abortion either. It involves my thoughts on the concept of framing. At the risk of having my not-quite-yet-earned graduate degree revoked, here goes.

Communication theory is hardly ever groundbreaking. A vast majority of it is developed by a scholar who creates a theory that either states the blatant obvious or attempts to do so (e.g. Benoit’s Image Repair Discourse Model, Grunig’s Excellence Theory, Relationship Management, Agenda-Setting, Cultivation, Priming, etc.) All of these theories have extremely valid points and usually combine some form of sociology and psychology to explain either how humans communicate with one another or how they should communicate.

Framing is another one of these theories. It’s just a lot more well-known. Outside of communication fields, people use framing. Why?

Framing is a dead-on theory that describes a set of worldviews that individuals choose to take about the world. Frames can be carefully devloped with the help of other theories like social learning, cultivation and priming. However, it is a carefully constructed image of how people should think and look upon a certain topic. Hence my declaration that framing is simply strategic name calling. If you doubt me, look at the change in societal views over smoking the past 20 or 30 years. Our smoke-free laws and the Truth Campaign today are a result of strategic frames that the tobacco-control world developed years ago.

As explained in my comments in my previous post on this issue, the “pro-choice” crowd adopted a frame of “choice” because it was much more palattable to mainstream America,which has always been and continues to be personally against abortion. However, we take our views of liberties and rights very seriously in our country. How do you take something as wretched as violently entering a womb with saline and burning a fetus before vaccuuming him or her out and make that concept acceptable to average Americans? 

1) Test several types of messages until you find one that resonates with a majority.

2) Create carefully articulated frames and arguments around that issue, giving it the appearance of constitutionality by making it sound patriotic or American. These frames are usually built around themes that we cherish in this country, such as “freedom,” ”choice”  and “rights.”

Abortion is hardly the only issue that uses this. It was just one of the first controversial matters to go with it.

I fervently belive that “pro-life” is a much more accurate frame simply because this side focuses on the harsh reality of abortion. You can argue choice, rights and privacy all day long. However, in the end a life is taken. A life that was never given the opportunity to make any choices, fight for rights or seek privacy. If I could make the pro-choice crowd understand one thing, we’re not fighting about your “rights” (even the most liberal feminist scholar has to admit that Roe v. Wade is a terrible legal decision), but the fact that there’s a viable life in the womb that has every right and liberty that us “born” people argue about everyday but never gets to experience. The real issue of abortion is that it takes an innocent life that deserves to live. Because of that, all other frames are simply not accurate and  remain carefully manufactured PR arguments.

Elyzabethe-political comm is going to be interesting. Don’t you want to join us, Erin?

When your mom has a degree in journalism, and then you follow with two degrees in public relations, things like unbiased reporting and ethics in journalism stick out.

Can I get press credentials? I’m not nearly as biased as some of these people.

It’s not like they’re breaking their own code of ethics or anything.

As we’ve seen with the Hillary video this week, online videos are only growing in popularity. Campaigns aren’t alone in creating videos for the Internet. Every industry is scrambling to add a video component to their overall strategies, but who’s watching?

Earlier this week, Magid Associates released survey results on the demographics of online video viewers:

Overall, among 12- to-64-year-old Internet users, daily usage of online video rose by 56% over the last year. This year, 14% reported using online video every day–up from 9% in 2006. Weekly usage also rose 18% over last year, with 52% of the Internet users viewing online video once a week or more, compared with 44% in 2006.

In all age groups, Magid reported, males are more regular viewers of online video. Among females ages 18 to 24, weekly use of online video is 53%. The population that has the lowest rate of weekly online video usage is older women. Among females 55 to 64 years old, 39% report using online video weekly.

When 50% of Internet users are watching videos weekly, it’s a strong arguement to somehow fold this tactic into the web.

But is this a fad? If the iPhone takes off, there’s a good chance that YouTube will remain a top web destination for while. Furthermore, YouTube is increasing globally. A Guardian article yesterday highlighted YouTube’s expansion in Europe on the web and mobile devices.

Cross posted at TechRepublican