Open MINDS Institute

The 2016 US presidential election promises to be anything but ordinary. This series of talks will go beyond the headlines and escape the echo chamber of punditry to understand how media impacts public opinion. Is the press the “fourth estate”? Are the media liberally biased? Have presidential politics just become a reality competition? Does image really trump substance (no pun intended)? From historical understandings of how mass media fundamentally changed how Americans communicate and participate in the public sphere to predictions about how social media and emerging digital technologies will impact the 2016 election, this series of talks will turn a critical eye on the press. Starting with the advent of radio and television and ending with the explosion of Twitter, these talks will raise questions about how our media don’t simply transmit messages through space, but instead have a responsibility to facilitate meaningful discourse that is essential to our democracy. Our final fifth class session is a ‘wrap up’ to measure the media impact on the results after Nov 8 Election Day as the class monitors events this coming fall.

DR. DAVID GUDELUNAS is a Professor of communication at Fairfield University where he also serves as Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. He researches and teaches in the areas of emerging media and communication industries. He earned his BA from the University of San Francisco and his MA and Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Gudelunas has appeared in local and national media including MSNBC, THE AP, The Christian Science Monitor, the Hollywood Reporter, the Connecticut Post and the LA Daily News and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. You can follow him @gudelunas.