For most academics, a new school year has just started or will soon begin, and we thought this would be a good moment to solicit some wisdom about teaching in our field. Many of the undergraduates we teach are bright, dedicated, and fascinated by the interplay between the mass media and politics. Others, however, registered for our classes because political communication fit into their schedule or because they needed three more credit hours in their major field to graduate. Yet all of them are citizens, old enough to vote and affected in important ways by current government policies. Much of our own research tells us we can’t just teach the best and leave the rest, so how can we use our classrooms to enhance the quality of citizenship among even those who are more interested in getting a degree than in getting an education? In this edition of the roundtable, we asked authors of some of the more popular political communication textbooks to share their insights about teaching political communication. We asked them first to define the field of political communication and distinguish it from other, similar subfields such as public opinion. Then, we asked them to say something about what can we realistically expect our undergraduates to absorb and retain that will improve their citizenship skills and make them more savvy consumers of political information. Here’s what they had to say:

Doris A. Graber, author of Mass Media and American Politics
I...let students know that political communication is a vibrant, growing area of social science. New research paths are constantly opening up even in well-established research areas....When political communication scholars examine the message interplay about domestic and foreign policies that shapes the opinions of elites and ordinary people, they draw on multiple social sciences. That includes psychology, sociology, communication and, in recent years, neuro-science. In fact, crossing disciplinary borders to explain human behaviors in response to political messages is one of the hallmarks of current political communication studies. I may ask...what do you need to learn and practice to be an effective citizen? Answers to such questions make students realize that political communication is not only something to study and know; above all, it is something to practice. If and when they do, they will feel the thrill of discovering that civic activism can improve the lives of the people they cherish, however wide that circle may be. [Full article]

Richard M. Perloff, author of Political Communication: Politics, Press and Public in America
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... 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. [Full article]

David L. Paletz, author of The Media in American Politics: Contents and Consequences
We have a broad understanding of political communication. For us, it starts with people’s political socialization, public opinion, and political participation; continues with interest groups, political parties, and campaigns and elections; covers the institutions of government (legislature, executive, bureaucracy, and courts); and culminates with policymaking and public policies.
We have a broad understanding of information and of the media. For us, students live in an information age. They acquire almost all of their information about people in politics, the institutions and processes of government, and public policies in mediated ways.... At the same time, students are often unfamiliar with the causes of the media’s contents. That is, the importance of ownership, profits, professionalism and prestige. They do not know much about the process by which news is reported and presented. They have opinions about but little understanding of such issues as objectivity and bias. [Full article]