Comparative Politics II: Political Communication

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2025-2026/W_JSM_213

Course Objective

After completion of the course, the student is able to apply theories on political communication and journalism:To critically analyse and give feedback on research literature about the news and political information impact on citizens’ attitudes and behaviour;To assess theoretical and empirical alternatives of how political information influences public opinion;To evaluate their own work and the work by others on the real-world impact of political information and news in the digital age;To argue and contribute to a discussion on the impact of news in the digital age on citizenship knowledge, skills and attitudes. To orally present and discuss choices made by politicians, journalists, and citizens in terms of democratic citizenship.

Course Content

In almost no political systems do citizens have direct contact with their political representatives. One could say – and scholars of political communication have done so – that politicians operate in a highly mediatized environment, where media are citizens’ principal source of political information. The field of political communication investigates how politics is portrayed in media (i.e. by journalists), and subsequently, how citizens process and use that information about politics. For example a significant area of research in the political communication field, looks at which political issues are on the media agenda, how they are transferred to the public agenda and how does that influence people’s vote choice. Another significant focus I on which part of certain political argumenta are made salient by the journalist (i.e. how is an issue framed in a news article), and how does that enhance or hinder political knowledge? Political Communication is a vast academic field, and one period is not enough time to give even a tacit introduction to all the content and issues within its purview. In this course, we therefore focus on news impacts – that is, how news is made, and what its effects are on public opinion and behaviour. The readings are a capita selecta. Many other articles could have been chosen. Because Political Communication is an inherently diverse and interdisciplinary field, this is reflected in the readings. Overall, this course helps students to find answers to political communication questions with a combined theoretical and practical approach. Theoretically, students will study classic and recent literature on political communication. During the lectures we spend time to contextualize the readings assigned for each topic, as well as discuss the societal and pragmatic implications. During the tutorials, students work in groups on their weekly challenges and assignments. These activities aim to train students to communicate core concepts in political communication to various audiences and device convincing arguments to make complex political ideas through the public. Among the challenges that politics faces, there is how to get citizens engaged and involved in democracy. Communication is one of the tools that political communicators experts and advisors use to enhance citizens involvement in politics. The course challenges and assignments aim to make students to acquire and improve their communication skills applied to the political process. Given that this is a political communication course, students are expected to follow news on politics closely during this period. As we will see in this course, path to news and political information are certainly varied so you have plenty of options to choose from. In any case, make sure that you keep up with current events by reading newspapers (paper version or online), watch national or international television news shows, listen to news analyses on the radio, podcasts or on social media.

Teaching Methods

Literature Lectures
- Monday and Tuesday
- The theoretical understanding of each week’s topic is central during the lectures. To enhance students’ theoretical understanding, they will give a presentation in groups to introduce one of the papers assigned that week. Groups who are not presenting on that lecture, hand in one discussion question (one question per group not presenting). The lecture will include a workshop dynamic in the second part of the class in which the presentation of the reading will take place. The theoretical investigation, as stated in Learning Objectives #1 and #2, is central in the remainder of the lecture. During the lecture, we try to identify what parts of the theory are relevant to understand causes, consequences or mechanisms identified underlying political communication processes. Moreover, we will work toward identifying what parts of the current state of the field could be improved, based on the reading questions you prepared. Based on our theoretical investigation, students work on a weekly challenge – for more information, see Section 5. Working Groups
- Thursday and Friday
- During the Working Groups, we pay attention to the empirical implications of the theories under study that week. The students will work on teams: To prepare a Group Debate around a topical issue on political communication with substantial societal impact; (Learning Objective #5). To prepare Two Weekly Challenges to increase citizenship knowledge on the concepts of course literature and tie those concepts to a real-world event (Learning Objective #3 and #4). To prepare One individual Assignment to analyse the role of social media algorithms in mediating your news media diets (Learning Objective #3 and #4).During the tutorial, students get time and support to develop the material for the assignments and the debate preparation. Students will also receive peer-feedback on their assignments during the Working Groups and implement that feedback in their final submissions (Learning Objective #3).

Method of Assessment

The final grade exist of (1) Portfolio of Assignments; and (2) the Oral Exam. Each element makes up 50% of the final grade. The Portfolio of Assignments consists of three parts: (a) Two Weekly Challenges (b) The Group Debate (c) Group Preparation and Presentation of the assigned readings and questions to other groups There is no compensation possible between the portfolio of assignments and the oral exam. That is, both have to be sufficient, i.e., higher than a 5.5. If a student has an insufficient grade for either the portfolio of assignments or the oral exam, the student takes a resit of the entire course by doing an individual assignment – this will be made available to Canvas. What is possible, however, is to compensate within the portfolio of assignments.

Literature

A selection of scientific papers included on Canvas and chapters of the books below will be part of the mandatory literature: Perloff, R. M. (2020). The dynamics of news: Journalism in the 21st-century media milieu. Routledge. Chapters, 2, 3 and 4. Klinger, U., Kreiss, D., & Mutsvairo, B. (2023). Platforms, power, and politics: An introduction to political communication in the digital age. John Wiley & Sons. Chapters 1 and 2. Wolfsfeld, G. (2022). Making sense of media and politics: Five principles in political communication. Taylor & Francis. Chapter 3, 4 Bruns, A. (2019). Are filter bubbles real?. John Wiley & Sons. Chapter 2, 3

Target Audience

Second year PPE students

Additional Information

An active academic participation is expected, which means that you are prepared for every meeting, participate actively and positively in class. This includes both class discussions and informal in-class assignments, including writing tasks. Participation is mandatory in all meetings.

Recommended background knowledge

Mandatory courses PPE specialization Track 3: Political Science