As usual, if you want or need clarification on any of this, please let me know. Be sure to click on the “read more” link to see the whole of this message.

Many of you are already reading chapters three and four. That’s good. Those summaries, in sentence format, are to be submitted by midnight tonight as previously indicated. While reading and summarizing, look for an idea or concept from which to build the analysis of your chosen video. There is a sample essay that should give you an idea about what you should do with your essay, but I’ll offer explanation here, and a sample, but brief, analysis of an video.

After reading the two chapters, it’s essential that you also read the savvy voter criteria as well as the rest of the material linked to the assignment. The assignment calls for applying the savvy voter criteria to the video of your choice. There are many videos you can work with other than those that are provided as part of the assignment. You can use serious videos, campaign videos, funny videos, spoofs of candidates or anything you like, as long as you address the assignment expectations of making it clear how the video can be read and that you can read it in that way.

Here’s a sample video I’ve pulled off youtube:

For starters, here’s a list of the savvy voter criteria: candidate mythology, background locations, appeals, emotion communicating faces, depicted actions, props, music and background sounds, film editing, clothing, and supers and code words. Not all of these should be looked at, but only those you find to be most relevant to the springboard passage and the claim you develop based on that.

Let’s say that my thesis is something like this: While Obama supporters are likely to revel in the message of the “New Energy” ad, McCain supporters are unlikely to see much merit, showing that, as Jackson and Jamieson note, we tend to seek out information that supports our existing views, rather than opening ourselves to new ways of thinking. This is in no way a great thesis, but it should give an idea that the essay will look at how we look to validate what we think rather than seek out the truth, at least as a species.

I would come to this thesis from this springboard passage: Jackson and Jamieson write in UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation that “Psychological experiments have shown, for one thing, that humans tend to seek out even weak evidence to support their existing beliefs, and to ignore evidence that undercuts these beliefs” (69).

So, what points might I touch on to demonstrate that my claim is a good one? Candidate mythology is always a good place to start. This ad, I’d say, shows Obama as a savior. He’s going to save us (Americans that is, maybe the world, who knows) from ruinous energy prices because he has a plan (though we don’t get much in the way of specifics.) He’ll also save us from the ruinous policies of Bush and McCain. There is more, but you can see that the implication is he will save us from Republican ideas and policies. After describing the candidate myhthology, what that is in general, I’d describe how this shows Obama as a savior. I’d conclude the paragraph by tying it back to my thesis, that Obama supporters will be “right on” while McCain supporters will be saying “Yeah, right.” I’d go into a bit more about why that’s the case, but I hope you see the point.

I might also look at the editing and camera work, or maybe editing. I’m not sure yet where this idea I have fits. What I noticed in the video is that all the “bad” news tied to Bush and McCain is in red. But when it gets to the Obama good news plan, the information is in blue. It’s not an accident that the red state/blue state division, that Republicans are red and Democrats are blue, is being played on. If I were to write about this point, I’d describe how the red is used, how the blue is used, and what a viewer might take this to mean, but then I’d explain how the information itself will likely be resisted by a McCain supporter while an Obama supporter will be, as I noted above “right on!”

Other points I could touch on include props (flags for instance), or background locations, or depicted actions. There are also quite a few supers imposed and code words (“voted with Bush” where Bush is code for failed policies and practice, secrecy and everything bad a Democrat will likely see in the Bush administration). Just about any of the Savvy Voter criteria could be applied to this video in a variety of ways.

As usual, let me know what questions this doesn’t answer.