Question 1: T/F CSS 4310 has been useful, valuable, and/or personally relevant to my personal life. The CSS 4310 class has been useful in my personal life. Politics surrounds everyone, but it does uniquely impact me. This class has direct implications on my career as I plan on working in public policy. Politics cannot exist without communication–it informs public discourse, lends credibility to candidates, and influences constituent opinions. As such, understanding our class principles has not only been helpful in understanding political discourse as a voter myself, but it has also been useful for a career that will use the things we have learned to strategically impact discourse. Class discussions on authenticity, the orchestra pit theory,…show more content… Roger Ailes, creator of Fox News, explained: “It’s my orchestra pit theory of politics. You have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news” (). Understanding the theory not only helps viewers consider news coverage holistically, but it also helps explain the actions of some political candidates. For example, Donald Trump says a lot of things, some of them extreme. But he knows that the more wild his comments are, the more likely they are to be covered by the media, and in his eyes all media–positive or negative–is good media. The orchestra pit theory allows politicians to strategically use the media to their advantage. Understanding narrative paradigms is a useful tool learned in this class. According to Steve Jobs, “every good speech starts the same way: ‘let me start with a story’” (). Narrative paradigms are important because they operate more subtly than arguments: they persuade the listener without directly naming the persuasive
