Fresh Politics, New Media

It's hard to believe that the third week of classes is almost over at Towson University. We've been having a lot of fun in my Towson Seminar ( Popular Culture and Politics: Comedy, Entertainment, Celebrity, and Democracy ) and we've been reviewing some interesting video content In fact, I'm struck by how much material the 2012 campaign has already provided. We spent some time talking about Clint Eastwood's Invisible Chair debacle at the Republican National Convention -- what a great example of celebrity politics gone wrong! If you don't believe me, see for yourself: We've been giving equal treatment to the Democrats too -- a great gem from this past week was this New York Times article about Joe Biden's get together with a group of bikers in Ohio. The NYT journalist penning the piece, Sarah Wheaton, offers some spot on commentary regarding the picture featured in the article. Even she can't believe it's not ripped from the pages of The Oni...

Last week, I spoke with Washington Post journalist Paul Farhi about my research on the effects of political comedy programs and the freshman seminar on popular culture and politics that I'll be teaching at Towson University this fall. Farhi's article published in The Washington Post and reprinted on the web sites of a variety of regional papers ( Pittsburgh Post Gazette , Chicago Tribune, New Orleans Times Picayune to name just a few) quickly attracted attention. John Hudson offered his take on studying Colbert at the college and university level for The Atlantic Wire and Sophia McClennen offered a rebuttal over at the Huffington Post with student Remy M. Maisel. I too agree that John Hudson could use some help picking the right statistics to compare. He's welcome to enroll in my MCOM490 class: Mass Communication Research where we devote a few weeks to statistical principles. I'd also be happy to have Hudson visit my upcoming seminar. The full title...

I'm happy to report that I've published a new piece of research in the latest issue of the British Journal, Celebrity Studies . The article, originally a part of my dissertation, examines the influence of celebrity issue advocacy messages (both video and text) on political engagement at the issue level. This new research emphasis on celebrity politics represents a new direction for my research on the impact of political entertainment. The case study for the research is Angelina Jolie's involvement with the global refugee crisis and the impact of exposure to her celebrity advocacy efforts vs. exposure to advocacy efforts of an expert on situational involvement, complacency, and apathy toward the refugee issue. The experiment discussed in the article presents some interesting findings about the relationships between receptivity toward celebrity politics and apathy and complacency, and the relationships between situational involvement on the issue and political disaffection....