Spring 2015 seminar: JAMS 835 (Media and Politics)
The spring 2015 version of JAMS 835 will be a hands-on seminar that helps students
produce a scholarly paper on a topic related to politics and the media. Students may use any
research method appropriate to the topic they select.
The seminar will begin with a few weeks of reading designed to provide a common
vocabulary for discussions about politics and the media. The rest of JAMS 835 will be
devoted to workshopping sections of students’ papers (introductions, literature reviews,
results sections, etc.), a process that involves mobilizing everyone’s intelligence and critical
faculties to improve the quality of a student's work.
Students will choose their own research topics with the advice of the instructor. Past
versions of the class have produced papers on topics such as:
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Political themes in popular music.
False balance in news coverage.
Gender issues in political advertising.
Blogs as a political force in local elections.
Campaign finance law and whether money is speech.
The effect of race on news production.
False political advertising and the law.
The influence of conservative talk radio.
JAMS 835 will not be a traditional political communication seminar (i.e., one that
emphasizes quantitative approaches to topics such as framing and agenda-setting). Instead,
the focus of the class will be determined by students' interests.
The instructor of JAMS 835 is David Pritchard. Pritchard has been a Fulbright research
scholar, a visiting professor at universities in Canada and France, and a fellow of UWM's
Center for 21st Century Studies. Before moving into the academic world, he was a newspaper
reporter for seven years.
Pritchard's scholarly research includes two books and numerous articles and essays in
journals such as Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Communication, Communication Law and Policy,
and Canadian Journal of Political Science. He has done applied research for major media
corporations, law firms, and government agencies in both Canada and the United States. He
has supervised five Ph.D. theses and more than 50 master’s theses. He also has co-authored
several research articles with graduate students.
Pritchard will be a visiting professor at the Institut d'études politiques in Lyon, France, for
three weeks in March. During those three weeks JAMS 835 will be conducted on line.