Politics and Media 3: Selling the Prez

1. T/F? Both Barrack Obama and John McCain had sites on MySpace and Facebook during the campaign.
2. T/F? People in Minnesota and Florida see the same political TV advertisements.
3. In 1968, what did Humphrey and Nixon do that nobody wanted the American public to know about?
4. According to the research firm PQ Media, how much money will will presidential candidates spend on advertising this year?
5. Among younger voters, what form of media is replacing TV as the primary source of information about candidates?
6. According to the above article, who did the news media favor to win the election?
7. T/F? Newspapers have the right to endorse a political candidate.
8. According to the Pew Research Center Poll conducted last October, what percentage of Americans felt that news media favored Obama over McCain?
9. The election is over and Obama is president. Think back to the months leading up to the election. Do you feel that Obama and McCain received equal coverage by the news media? Should they? Why is this important? Explain.
10. "The response is to the image, not to the man... It's not what's there that counts, it's what's projected." What is the meaning of this quote? Is it still true today? Do you agree? Explain.

Use one or two adjectives to describe how each candidate looks.

Make at least one observation about the lighting for each image.

Notice the camera angle on both covers.

What might the cover words tell you about each candidate?

What might their nonverbal expressions reveal or mean?

How might they have been photographed differently?

Senator John McCain was on the cover August 2006
Former Sen. John Edwards graced the cover in August 2007 and
Senator Barack Obama graced the cover in June 2008.
 

Compare and contrast these three images:
pay close attention to expressions, clothes, camera angles, color and more.
What do you see?