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Roderick P. Hart is the Liddell Professor of communication
and professor of government, University of Texas. His areas of special
interest are American government, politics and the media, and presidential
studies. He is the author of six books including, The Political
Pulpit, Verbal Style and the Presidency, The Sound of Leadership,
and Seducing America. His most recent publications
include "Politics and the Virtual Event: An Overview of the
Hill-Thomas Hearings" in Political Communication.
He is currently co-directing the Campaign Mapping Project, designed
to track changes in the vocabulary of democracy between 1960 and
the present.
Hart received his BA degree from the University of Massachusetts,
and MA and Ph.D. degrees from Pennsylvania State University. He
taught at Purdue University from 1970-1979 before coming to the
University of Texas.
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Politics in an Age of Media
January 6-10, 1999
at the University of Oklahoma
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This course discussed how American politics has changed in
response to the growth of the mass media industries. It considered
such questions as these: How is political life portrayed in
the mass media today and what are the effects of those portrayals?
Do the mass media advance or retard citizen involvement in political
life? What skills must leaders have to be successful in an age
of media? As the quantity of political information has increased,
has its quality increased as well? What are the political effects
of such new phenomena as all-news television stations, satellite
delivery of campaign advertising, the Internet and the World
Wide Web, the professionalization of reporting practices, international
news conglomerates, and, yes, "The 'X' Files"? Here
are some old questions to be considered: Do we still have a
need for political eloquence? Do we still have a taste for it?
And here is a new question needing even more consideration:
Why is it now so fashionable to be politically cynical? Through
readings, lectures, classroom exercises and discussions, participants
considered these questions and more.
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The Class Reading List: (These books and articles supplied
by OSLEP)
Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since
Independence, Daniel Rodgers, Harvard University Press.
Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter,
Roderick P. Hart, Sage Publications, fall 1998.
New Media and American Politics, Richard Davis and
Diana Marie Owen, Oxford University Press, fall 1998.
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