Journals

                                                                                               August 10th

Some of the activities that I’m involved in include Student Government, UNICEF Club, Teen Science Cafe, volunteering at the Guilderland Public Library, and part-time jobs at two companies. In addition, I also love reading and learning more about politics (as you could probably tell from the topic I chose this year). I was able to balance my time with EMC and other activities last year because I allocated time for both and the schedule for EMC didn’t overlap with my other activities. In my schedule for this year, I see myself fitting EMC work into my study hall and times throughout the week and weekend. To be honest, most of the books that I’ve been reading recently are Nonfiction and I wouldn’t say that I have one favorite book because I have a lot of favorites. If I could be any character from one of my favorite fiction books, it would have to be Sherlock Holmes from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Not just because I love a good mystery but also because I like getting to the bottom of things that no one can explain or understand. And trying to understand why things are the way they are. Similarly, Sherlock Holmes is able to find out the answers to even some of the toughest questions related to a case. I also consider myself to be quite observant and if I find something fascinating, I usually drop everything and focus on delving deeper into it just like how Sherlock Holmes is obsessed with solving a mystery. Lastly, I’m more of a deep thinker just like Sherlock Holmes. 

                                                                          August 17th

The biggest challenge in terms of motivation in EMC is when you feel like you're in a "research slump." It's basically when you feel like you got through a lot of the research you have to do and are confused about what else to look into with regard to your topic. One of my favorite memories from inside the classroom last year was participating in Socratic seminar discussions in my AP English Language class. As someone who likes group discussions, it was amazing to take part in them. As for my favorite memory from outside of the classroom last year, I can't really decide. Because I've had a multitude of great experiences in all of the extracurriculars I participated in. I feel like traditional grading is generally pretty fair because factors such as homework, class participation, and test scores are combined and calculated in a way that is pretty straightforward. However, I think that educational institutions tend to give more value to learning for a standardized test as opposed to enrichment learning. I feel like we put too much of an emphasis on test scores and it doesn't make sense if you consider that a reflection of how you do on a test is based on your performance for 2-3 hours in one day. But I feel like it's better to give more weight to class grades because it's a better indicator of how well a student is performing in a particular subject than a student's performance on a 3-hour test. One thing I'm looking forward to this year are my electives (Public Speaking, Civil Conversation, and EMC). 

                                                                         August 24th

The topic that I'll be researching this year is political polarization. I started to become really interested in reading about politics in 2020 and I think that an increased exposure to news than usual made me realize that politics plays a role in basically everything in our country. As someone who also likes history, I found myself watching previous debates and speeches of politicians as well as looking into why certain candidates lost in elections. Once I began to pay more attention to legislation that was or wasn't passed, I began to realize that polarization could mean the difference between solving or stalling critical issues. Unfortunately, political polarization has been on the rise in the US in recent years. A study conducted by Brown University showed that the US is the only major democratic country in the world to have an increase in political polarization over the past 40 years. Some things that I do know about political polarization are that certain forms of lobbying and corruption as well as ideological divides have a lot to do with why politicians can't seem to agree on much anymore. Some questions that I have as I begin my research include: What are some of the factors that led to increased polarization in the past decade? What role does the media play in polarization? How can we make politics a less divisive to talk about? 

                                                                        September 14th 

I am looking to investigate political polarization in American politics. I think I know about the basic psychology behind partisanship, cognitive dissonance, and confirmation bias. Basically, partisanship is associating yourself with a political party and heavily agreeing/supporting it. Cognitive dissonance is when you refuse to believe something that differs from your beliefs and perspective on life. Confirmation bias is when you seek out information that supports your beliefs. All of these topics tend to play a huge part in the psychology behind our political participation. I think I know the role that social media plays in political polarization. Social media tends to increase the feeling of partisanship because algorithms on each platform specifically recommend content that you enjoy or support. For example, Twitter may recommend content related to the Democratic Party if you follow Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer. Social media also gives you the chance to join groups that also share similar political beliefs as you and it may increase confirmation bias and feelings of partisanship as well as a hatred of the other side. I know I know that political polarization has increased over the past 40 years, primarily in the US due to the availability of partisan cable news among other key factors (Brown Study). I know I know that social media plays a role in political polarization because maximized engagement opportunities do lead to an increase in polarization as the content you view is usually never one of a differing view (Brookings Study). I know I know the history of polarization pretty well. Prior to the late 1960s and early 1970s, most Americans weren't able to identify strong differences in political parties because of good bipartisanship and were less likely to view the other side with animosity or agree with the idea of "voting for the lesser of two evils." Even in the 1970s, both parties could agree on things such as healthcare policy (Nixon proposed a healthcare bill that was a precursor to Obamacare/Affordable Care Act) and immigration reform (Ronald Reagan signed an immigration bill that is unlikely to be accepted by the Republican Party today). After Ronald Reagan's Administration got rid of the FCC Fairness Doctrine (which ensured that the news was non-partisan), it gave media conglomerates the power to combine the news with opinion. All of a sudden, you could have a completely different view of America based on where you got your news from. (Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein).

                                                                      September 21st

After having a conversation with Momin this week in an EMC Roundtable meeting, I realized that I might know too much about my topic. I definitely have way more "I think I Know's" and "I Knows." At that point, I was considering broadening my topic to something in the intersection of psychology and politics. But after discussing it with Mr. Bott and Mrs. Gergen, I realized that there could be at least 1-2 "I don't knows" that I could use for this upcoming SDA and journal. How does political polarization affect the average individual in the US? And historically speaking, how did we get to this point? 

It's easy to talk about how polarization plays out in Washington, but it's just as important to find out about how it affects ordinary Americans. For starters, are people aware of the increased political polarization? And if so, how are they unknowingly contributing to it? I wonder if one way is by staying in an echo chamber where you only listen to things that align with your beliefs. It's easier to talk to people that you agree with than disagree with.

More importantly, analyzing history and how exactly we got to this point might provide answers to ways that we can bridge the political divide. In the 1950s (and several decades before as well), Democrats and Republicans didn't have much to disagree on. To the point where the American Political Science Association suggested both parties clarify where they differed in their political ideologies in order to help voters make better decisions at the polls. Starting in the 1960s, however, there was a party swap. Democrats during this time period became more associated with liberal policies such as voting in favor of civil rights. Republicans became more conservative and gained more voters from the South, who were against civil rights legislation. It's important to note that these party differences took several decades to develop and didn't happen in just a decade. Political polarization became more common in the 1970s due to party changes. Because of the shift in both parties, there were fewer moderates and a general trend of partisanship. There was also a shift in the demographics of voters that each party associated themselves with. Democrat voters were more likely to live in urban areas, secular people, people of color, and women. While Republican voters were more likely to be working-class white voters, people who lived in rural areas (mostly in the South and Midwest), and Catholics/evangelicals. I also need to find more concrete information about the history involved and find a good way to communicate the information that I learned so that it can be understood by a general audience.

                                                                     September 28th

One "Need to Know" that I have for these next few weeks is the question: How does the mainstream media affect polarization? I became curious about the answer to this question ever since I read about the removal of the FCC Fairness Doctrine and from my own experiences of getting completely differing news for the same story depending on the platform that it was. According to AllSides.org, news platforms can either be left (ex: MSNBC), leaning left (ex: ABC News), center (ex: BBC), leaning right (ex: New York Post) and right (ex: Fox News). According to a study (News generation bias study) done by John B. Holbein, Matthew R. Miles, and Hans J. G. Hassel, there isn't a broad ideological bias in the news generation process (ex: selecting which stories to report on or which people to interview). The study also surveyed a large group of journalists and found that 78% of those who identified as independents leaned towards a certain political party. But when groups of journalists were approached with a fake political candidate to interview, liberal journalists responded just as much as conservative journalists to cover the candidate despite political differences. Although, it should be noted that the fake conservative political candidate received 0.4 times fewer response rates for coverage than a liberal one. Two problems with the study are that some journalists might have identified as independents on the survey in order to appear more objective and that the study only disproved the gatekeeping bias in news generation. According to Reuters, only 42% of Americans say that they trust the news most of the time. Even though other countries also reported lower trust levels when it came to the news, the US had the lowest rate by far. More specifically, 17% of those on the right say that they trust the news and 50% of people on the left say that they trust the news (World Economic Forum + Reuters Study). I think it's worth exploring this deeper and trying to see if the political affiliation or preference of a news platform affects actual reporting. 

                                                                                             October 18th

For the first SDA,  I would say that I spent 4 hours on it. I chose the format that I did because it would allow me to combine the creation of a PSA with an audio format such as a podcast. Therefore, technology wasn’t a limiting factor. One thing that I would do differently next time is to choose a different SDA from the menu because I feel like there are so many cool ideas that I could do in future months that I haven’t been able to explore yet. I liked the SPECS definition of critical thinking because it provides specific questions that I should continually ask myself when researching my topic. For the longest time, the term “critical thinking” felt like a buzzword that didn’t have a clear definition. But the SPECS framework helps you seek new perspectives on an issue and ensures that you’re analyzing evidence more deeply. I think defining the things that I know, don’t know, and need to know helped me to an extent. However, I don’t think it necessarily made a huge difference for me, because I kind of went into my topic knowing a lot about it. So, it was hard to define what I didn’t know. But identifying what I needed to know for the month helped a lot because it provided me with a question to go off of in researching. I found the directions to be very clear and helpful. 

My next “need to know” question is: What parts or features of political correctness contribute to political polarization? This is actually going off of what I worked on last month with how the mainstream media contributes to political polarization because I’ll now be able to see how language use affects the way we discuss and view politics as well as its overlap with political correctness. Language use doesn’t just affect those who are linguists or read the news frequently, it also affects how we’re able to have conversations about certain topics. For example, the usage of words such as “Latinx”, “BIPOC”, or “birthing people.” Investigating language use with those examples would be looking into why we use certain words and how it affects the general electorate or population. More broadly speaking, political correctness might even stifle free speech in an indirect way because it makes it substantially harder to consider new perspectives on issues out of a fear of judgment or isolation. Political correctness also has a lot to do with the concept of the overton window, which basically defines how much we’re allowed to talk about something. I’ve been looking into language usage by reading John McWhorter’s NY Times Columns because he’s a linguist and has written a lot about how rhetoric affects politics by analyzing both political perspectives of an issue. I’ve also looked into this by reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Speechless by Michael Knowles. 

                                                                                               October 26th

My new “need to know” question is: What parts or features of political correctness contribute to political polarization? As you can probably tell, this question hasn’t changed since the reflection post. Political correctness is an important topic to talk about when it comes to political polarization because it’s one of the many things that makes it harder to have productive conversations around sensitive topics such as identity or a stance on a particular issue. It also stifles free speech and makes it harder to express your thoughts about something due to a fear of judgment or being “canceled.” Cancel culture also has its roots in political correctness and if we combine these two things, it leads to even more polarization. My 3 sub-questions are: How does language use affect cancel culture on Twitter? How does political correctness affect college campuses? How does political correctness affect language use? The first sub-question is worth researching because incidents involving political correctness primarily occur on Twitter due to their loose free speech guidelines and news content. If I had to dive into this further, I would focus on a few recent instances of cancel culture and political correctness and see how the incident affected both sides as well as look into how it could be a symptom of a larger issue at play. My second sub-question is worth researching because there has been an increase in incidents involving free speech and political correctness on college campuses (mainly liberal arts and northeastern colleges in the US) since 2015. Typically, incidents involve protesting a speaker who goes to a college, firing professors for being politically incorrect, and how it’s much harder to have discussions in classes due to heightened levels of polarization. The book, The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff talks a lot about this and I think that looking into how it affects speakers who go to college campuses, students, professors, and college administrators would ensure that there's a balance in perspectives about the issue. Finally, I think it’s also worth researching the last sub-question because there’s a lot of overlap in political rhetoric and linguistics and they affect how readers may perceive a particular topic or issue. Also, the idea that certain words have to be removed or used for politically correct reasons changes language use over time. 

                                                                     November 2nd

My “need to know” question for the month (What parts or features of political correctness lead to polarization?) falls under Analysis in the Higher Order Thinking Questions List. Because it mimics the structure of an example question from the list and a lot of the research would involve analyzing why cancel culture is more common on Twitter. My first sub-question (How does language use affect cancel culture on Twitter?) would most likely also fall under Analysis on the Higher Order Thinking Questions List. My second and third sub-questions (How does political correctness affect college campuses? And How does political correctness affect language use?) would probably fall under Analysis and Evaluation in the Higher Order Thinking Questions List. These questions would involve analyzing and evaluating because I would specifically be researching the causes and effects of a particular situation. The one sub-question that I’ve chosen to drive my “need to know” question is: How does language use affect political correctness? Because I feel like I already know quite a bit of information about how political correctness affects college campuses and I wouldn’t be learning anything new that way. And I feel like it’s important to address the larger issue of how rhetoric plays a role in political correctness instead of just investigating the effects on areas such as Twitter or college campuses because there’s a larger effect on the masses if we hone in on linguistics. 

Here are the 3 sources I would use to investigate my “need to know” and sub-question:

Mcwhorter, John. “Every Day, We're Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 May 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/opinion/woke-words.html.

Mill, John Stuart, et al. All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech, Illustrated. Heterodox Academy, 2021.

Knowles, Michael J. Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. Regnery Publishing, 2022.

                                                                                            November 9th

My essential question is what parts or features of political correctness lead to increased political polarization? My most important sub-question is how does political correctness affect language use? I chose this particular essential question and sub-question after I noticed the large presence of cancel culture and political correctness. Celebrities or other famous people would be subjected to a lot of criticism for not using the right words that would indicate a regard for diversity or if they said political things that were outside of the norm. This was also right around the time when I began to read John McWhorter's NY Times Columns about the effects of linguistics and rhetoric in politics. More importantly, having to worry about political correctness or being cancelled when you're trying to have a conversation with someone has brought on a new type of pressure to not offend absolutely anyone. This all affects political polarization in one way or another. 

This question matters to me because I believe that exploring it further will unlock some insights into how rhetoric affects the way that we communicate about politics. This question matters to others in the field because it affects the way how politicians communicate with their constituents and is important in understanding our political divide as a nation. I chose this NY Times article by John McWhorter, “Every Day, We're Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?” Because it tackled exactly what I was looking for in order to help answer my essential question and it's a credible source because Dr. McWhorter is a Linguistics Professor at Columbia University. I chose the source, "All Minus One" because Jonathan Haidt is an expert in the area of political polarization and this particular piece looks into how the ideas of "safetyism", cancel culture, and political correctness affects college students and those in academia and it's implications for free speech as well as how we can properly deal with those challenges. I chose the book, Speechless by Michael Knowles in order to better understand how the issue of political correctness affects conservatives. 

My plan for this SDA is to write an editorial or the "Four Sources", where I would look into what two experts from both sides of the political spectrum think about political correctness. The plan for the editorial would be to write about the essential question and get it published in the Altamont Enterprise or another media source. But I also had this other idea to publish it on Substack (a popular writing platform) and use it to eventually create a political science newsletter to supplement what I've learned through the research I've done for EMC. I will answer my essential question by using my sources to understand the issue of political correctness by analyzing different perspectives on how it affects areas such as linguistics, political communication, free speech, and how it affects both Democrats and Republicans on a societal level. It's also worth looking into a phenomenon that I read about in John McWhorter's article,("Every Day, We're Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?”) known as the "euphemism treadmill", which refers to how we begin to use new and acceptable words to describe taboo subjects that eventually also become derogatory or unfavorable in use. 

Mcwhorter, John. “Every Day, We're Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 May 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/opinion/woke-words.html.

Mill, John Stuart, et al. All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech, Illustrated. Heterodox Academy, 2021.

Knowles, Michael J. Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. Regnery Publishing, 2022.

                                                                                  November SDA Reflection

Now that I’ve finished my second SDA, my thoughts on it are mostly positive. I’m glad that I used a different SDA type than just a podcast and that I was able to incorporate imagery, text, and audio effectively. I feel like I was able to convey a “So what?” and specified by focusing on one article and why political correctness is important/relevant. Overall, I think I spent about 2-3 hours on this SDA assignment. Out of the 5 C’s, I feel like I was able to hit on curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. But I think I still need to work on hitting the collaboration aspect in future SDAs. The most important thing that I learned was how useful it can be to experiment with different SDA styles. Another thing that I learned which is more specific to my topic is the importance of putting yourself in the perspectives of others instead of assuming their perspective. The vital sources that I used for this month and with crafting this assignment include: “Every Day, We're Told to Use New Lingo. What Does That Really Accomplish?” by John McWhorter, Speechless by Michael Knowles,  All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech, and “Political Correctness Is An Absolute Must” by Mark Hannah. I used these particular sources because all of them provided a lot of information about the historical and language aspect of political correctness and all of them presented different perspectives on the issue. I’m proud of the amount of research I did this past month and how I was able to put it all together in a different SDA style. I could improve my SDAs next time by using Screencastify as opposed to Vocaroo and Google Slides. I think that whatever I learned this month will continue to help me expand on how language and rhetoric influence how we view politics. The HOTQs were very helpful as they helped me narrow down what to research more specifically and the HOTQs also helped me answer my essential question and sub-question. 

                                                                    December 13th 

Corruption in politics matters because it's an issue that affects both politicians and ordinary Americans. Corruption prevents elected representatives from acting on what's in the best interest of the American people and it also leads to a continued distrust of the government. We know that corruption in politics is a problem because there are various examples of gerrymandering, special interest and lobbying groups trying to influence legislation, and politicians relying on the revolving door. According to a study conducted by Princeton University, the bottom 90% of Americans have a non-significant impact on influencing the passing of laws. Identity politics is another issue that affects both politicians and ordinary Americans. Identity politics is defined as using social identities (religion, race, or gender) in order to form party alliances. This is a problem because it often puts people into boxes based on factors that they have no control over and assumes life experiences, leading to more political divisions. According to a study done by UC Santa Barbara and Stanford University, reminding white voters about how white people would be outnumbered in the country by 2042 made them more likely to vote for Donald Trump. I would describe my biggest weakness in EMC right now as a lack of time. This is partly because of how busy December tends to be. I would describe my biggest strength in EMC right now to be doing well on SDAs. I feel like I plan them out and complete them efficiently.

                                                                              December 20th

Identity politics is the specific problem that I've chosen to focus on. This problem is important to me because I've often noticed the intersection between social identity and politics and how it shapes voting, elections, and our perceptions about government. Identity politics is important to the field at large because it influences how the elite can control certain movements by persuading certain groups of people and the ways in which political campaigns try to sway certain groups of people, and it invites a larger discussion about whether aspects of our identity are important in politics aside from existing to maintain a group's interests.

                                                                                            January 12th

The first scholarly article I chose is titled The Group Theory of Parties: Identity Politics, Party Stereotypes, and Polarization in the 21st Century. I used the ProQuest eLibrary Guided Research database along with the search terms “polarization”, “voting”, and “identity politics” to find the article. The article was about identity politics and how it has affected American politics (primarily) since 2016. Given the current rates of high polarization, one thing that the article touched on was how people from both parties perceived each other. For example, many Republicans that were surveyed in a YouGov poll believed that Democrats were mostly secular. Likewise, many Democrats surveyed believed that 38% of Republicans earned more than $250,000 a year. Members from both parties were very off when looking at the actual vs perceived results and it speaks to a larger point that people continue to use common stereotypes of both parties and assume that everyone has the same life experiences, falling prey to overgeneralization (Ahler and Sood 2018). The interesting thing is that revealing the truth behind these assumptions may actually hold the key to reducing polarization. Hearing information such as the fact that only 33% of Republicans are evangelicals and 25% of Democrats are Black might help people from both sides realize that there is more to a person than their political identity. Another important thing from the article was the crucial point that the factors that enabled identity politics (ex: partisanship and group conflict) have always existed in the political sphere while the 2016 election made it more apparent. If we look at the issue of partisanship, it’s not just about division over policy issues but also a division over identities/groups. The study that was referenced in this article surveyed 1000 American adults to measure their accuracy in perception of the other party. A scale between 0.5 (lowest) and 1 (highest) was used to measure levels of polarization and partisan animus . Democrats and Republicans that believed common assumptions of the other party had higher levels of partisan animus compared to the control group (Ahler 12). I believe that this article is relevant to my research because it provides an in-depth analysis of identity politics and polarization by looking into how social identities play a role in these areas. Some key terms that were new to me from this article were “partisan animus” and “representativeness heuristic.” 

                                                                                         January 19th

The second scholarly article that I read is titled Searching for a Solution to Political Polarization in the U.S. Through a Feminist Ethics of Care. I used the ProQuest eLibrary Guided Research database along with the search terms “polarization”, “voting”, and “identity politics” to find the article. The author, Marissa Smith, is a graduate student at the University of Maine pursuing an MA in Communications and the scholarly article is Smith’s dissertation and she previously did a senior capstone project that included writing a research paper about women in political leadership. It’s also worth noting that Smith identifies as a Democrat. The purpose of the scholarly article was to determine if college students could become less politically polarized through engaging in discourse that follows principles of social identity theory and a feminist ethics of care. In the study, college students from a variety of backgrounds and majors were given the opportunity to participate in focus groups that lasted for an hour where they were sensitized to polarizing topics through the use of facilitation that followed practices of a feminist ethics of care (Cawston & Archer, 2018; Gilligan, 1993; Makau & Marty, 2013; Noddings, 2018)  and spoke about their thoughts in groups of 4-6 people each. An important finding from the study is that most of the participants didn’t report any feelings of apathy towards those on the other side in the survey and even though there was an equal distribution of liberal and conservative students, many of the participants viewed themselves as “neutral and non-polarized partisans.” One flaw of the study was that it was done at a predominantly white institution, so there is a possibility that there wasn’t much diversity in participants. Another limitation was that it didn’t measure if polarization levels decreased after the focus groups. This article is different from last week’s article because the subjects of the “study” are college students that were still in the process of forming their identity and political beliefs and it presented a solution to polarization and wasn’t specifically focused on identity politics. Some new key terms were “feminist ethics of care”, “affective polarization”, “normative orientation”, and “identity foreclosure.” The proposed solution in the paper was to continue having discussions that took a feminist ethics of care into account in order to potentially aid in decreasing polarization levels. 

                                                                        January 26th

The third scholarly article that I read is titled Reducing opinion polarization: Effects of exposure to similar people with differing political views. The purpose of this article was to identify if some of the different modes of receiving information could increase/decrease political polarization in readers. The two modes of receiving information can be classified as “formal” or “informal.” A formal method of receiving information consisted of researchers presenting participants with research or sources that indicate why their political position is wrong or should change. For example, a Republican that doesn’t believe that climate change is a big issue would be presented with studies that confirm the dire effects of climate change. The informal method of receiving information would be the participants writing a short essay talking about personal reasons why someone should shift their viewpoint on a heated topic. Survey data was collected at the end to measure the effectiveness of the two modes of receiving information. The article was published in PNAS, which is an official peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Stefano Balietti is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim and his main research interest is the computational social sciences. Lise Getoor is a computer science professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is also involved in machine learning research. Daniel G. Goldstein is a Senior Principal Research Manager at Microsoft Research and is a judgment and decision-making researcher. Duncan J. Watts is a computer and information sciences professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In the study, two participants were matched based on ideological differences on certain political issues and their background (ex: demographics) in order to ensure that a liberal would be matched with a conservative. One participant would write an essay about why they believe that wealth redistribution is good/bad in order to try to convince the other participant to shift their line of thinking about the issue. 158 essays were collected and analyzed as part of the study. The results from the survey data indicated that even participants that were very partisan about the issue responded in a civil manner and some either slightly or completely shifted their viewpoint after reading an essay. Both Democrats and Republicans mostly stood their ground on the issue but were much more open to accepting or learning about different viewpoints after reading essays than if they were given a formal method of receiving the information. This is likely because we feel more emotionally connected to an ordinary person than a scientific study (Balietti, Getoor, Goldstein, Watts, 2021). The potential for bias can be seen in participant recruitment because most of the participants were white and older. This is connected to the real world and the research that I’m doing because the ways in which people receive information can impact their views on a certain issue and the validity of the information itself. I think a great example of this is where people get their political news from because each source tends to show its own worldview and this affects how people perceive issues in the country. Some key terms that were new to me were “opinion polarization” and “nonfocal.” In order to find this publication, I used Google Scholar and filtered by the date to include anything from 2018 to the present and used the search terms “political polarization” and “solutions.” 

                                                                                     Midterm Reflection

Prior to this assignment, I used databases and read scholarly articles to do research for EMC last year and for other courses. Reading scholarly articles allowed me to dive deeper into the area that I was studying with a focus on analyzing data and results. Being required to only use scholarly articles did kind of hinder my progress because there were other credible resources that provide more specific information that I was looking for. Being limited to scholarly articles didn’t hinder my curiosity because I did end up reading things that I decided to look into further after reading scholarly articles. It also didn’t limit my research skills in any way because if anything, it challenged me to use the right wording when trying to find a good article. My process for searching and finding scholarly articles was to first take a look at databases such as Academic One File or Gale, use advanced search to ensure that I find the right article that I’m looking for by using specific keywords, and filter the results by date and publication. Sometimes, if I didn’t find what I was looking for in those databases, I would broaden my search by using the same keywords on scholar.google.com and filtering the results accordingly. I learned to broaden the keywords that I used in order to increase my chances of finding the right article. I quickly realized that using broad terms like “voting” and “partisan” helped me yield more results than using a term such as “identity politics.” One thing that I found to be particularly interesting about reading scholarly articles was looking at how studies were conducted. The most challenging part was the requirement of scholarly articles because I feel like it may have limited me from seeking out more relevant information. I feel like I have met my goals for this month because I changed my essential question through further research and I liked the podcast I created for the second assignment. Out of the 5Cs, I feel like my strongest probably has to be communication or critical thinking because most of the SDAs that I’ve chosen so far use podcasts/screencasts to convey a deeper understanding of my topic. My weakest of the 5Cs is probably collaboration–but that will change pretty soon because of the upcoming interview assignment. I’m most proud of the fact that I was able to have a strong finish on my midterm assignment despite some initial setbacks. To be honest, there isn’t really anything else I would add that could be done differently to ensure my success and development in the class because everything seems good as it is. Finally, I’m still in the process of trying to iron out an essential question to focus on in March. 

                                                                                         March 2nd 

The first person that I'm interested in interviewing is Kamy Akhavan because he currently leads the Center for Political Future at USC and was a former CEO of Procon.org (a non-biased political information site) and has done 100+ interviews about political polarization. I got acquainted with Kamy Akhavan through a political podcast fellowship program that I'm currently in and contacted him already via email. Another person that I'm interested in interviewing is James Wallner because he's a political science professor at Clemson University, has written several books about partisanship and gridlock in politics, and also appears on national interviews to discuss political issues. I also found out about James Wallner through the Democracy Group. Another person that I'm interested in interviewing is Lee Drutman because he's a Senior Fellow for the Political Reform program at New America, has written a book about the political divide, and has also appeared on national media outlets to discuss political stability and the two-party system. Because of the podcast fellowship that I'm in, it will be easier to get connected with these individuals through email or a virtual meeting. 

Here's a sample of the email that I sent to Kamy Akhavan:

Hello Kamy,

Thank you so much for agreeing to do a practice podcast interview with me a few weeks ago for the Democracy Group's podcast fellowship. I'm studying political polarization for an independent research inquiry class at my high school. One of our assignments is to create a podcast where we interview an expert in the field of our research. Given your expertise as a former CEO of Procon.org and leading the Center for Political Future at USC, I feel like I would be able to gain a lot of new insights about my topic by interviewing you for this assignment. Is this something you would be interested in?

Thanks,

Shreya 

                                                                                            March 9th

My essential question has changed to: How can we heal the political divide? This is because I think it’s a natural progression of my research to focus on solutions. I have reached out to Kamy Akhavan (leads the Center for Political Future at USC, Former CEO of Procon.org), James Wallner (Partisan gridlock expert and a political science professor at Clemson University), and Lee Drutman (Senior Fellow for the Political Reform program at New America). I have heard back from Kamy Akhavan and we’re currently in the process of scheduling a date for the interview and I have to create a list of questions to ask in the interview. I prefer to use Anchor or SoundTrap to create the podcast episode. I have listened to This American Life: No Coincidence, No Story and an episode of the podcast, Let’s Find Common Ground and I will most likely use the second one as a mentor-cast. 

                                                                                             April 6th

I found the task and rubrics to be helpful for this assignment and the timeline was very reasonable. I feel like this assignment definitely helped in reinforcing things that I learned over the year as well as taught me some new things that helped me answer my essential question. The most difficult part of the assignment was editing my podcast and the most rewarding part was interviewing. One thing that I would do differently if I had to interview someone else is making sure all of the technical aspects worked by testing it out with someone else instead of just myself. Interviewing a professional in the field gave me different perspectives than just simply researching the topic because I got to learn from someone's experience in the field in terms of what can and can't work for solutions. Podcasting worked in that it allowed me to do something totally different for an SDA that I got to learn a lot from. But I think my essential question might have been answered pretty quickly in the podcast. One technological limitation was recording and editing the podcast, because I had a lot of things not work prior to starting my podcast. And editing my podcast proved to be very difficult and that was likely due to an update in Anchor's editing platform. If I was tasked with another interview and the opportunity to choose any way to make my learning public, I would still choose to do a podcast because it works well with the interview.  My plans for Spring Break are to tour a few colleges and go to NYC! 

                                                                            April 18th

Political polarization is the growing divide between political parties in which attitudes/beliefs shift to the extremes with little to no compromise or agreement. Even though it’s normal for two political parties to disagree on a multitude of things, polarization makes things more personal instead of just focusing on the facts. For example, it’s no longer “I disagree with your position on the 2nd Amendment because…,” It’s now “I don’t like you because of your stance on the 2nd Amendment.” Political polarization has been increasing in the United States over the past few years and tonight, I’d like to explain why and how we can fix it together using what I’ve studied throughout the year. Thesis: Political polarization has been a historical issue and has only increased due to a changing media landscape, social media use, and not being exposed to different people and viewpoints. The solution? Exposing yourself to new ideas, people, and activities as well as changing your media diet. 

                                                                                             April 24th

Throughout the school year, I studied political polarization by researching about the media, history, the use of language and rhetoric in politics, identity politics, and the various solutions and creating a podcast about what I’ve learned so far. 

Idea #1: (Show the institutional trust graph) According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2018, only about 20% say that they trust the media. And honestly, it’s hard to blame them. Everyday, we get inundated with new information–regardless of which platform you tend to get your news from. It can be hard to distinguish between what’s reliable and what isn’t, especially given the rise of misinformation. But maybe it doesn’t have to be this complicated. All we need to do is change our media diet. A diet is really just a collection of things that you consume. Therefore, a media diet is made up of the types of news that you consume. The problem with most of our media diets is simple: We don’t want to be proven wrong. We all exhibit signs of confirmation bias and seek to find information that fits our view of the world–and we ignore or refute the rest. We need to get more comfortable with looking at a variety of news sources. Think about it this way, you can’t survive by just eating oreos. You need a balanced diet. This could be as simple as looking into Fox News if you’re left-leaning or CNN if you’re right-leaning. Now, just because you viewed some content doesn’t mean that you have to agree with it and you probably won’t sometimes. 

Idea #2: Another simple way to combat political polarization on a larger level is to be involved with your community. According to a poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NORC, Americans don’t view community involvement as much of a priority compared to 25 years ago. And only 36% of Americans under the age of 30 consider themselves to be politically active. With the rise of social media and technological advancements, we no longer need to step outside of our houses to find and join specific communities. Getting more involved in your community allows you to meet people from all different backgrounds (race, gender, age, political affiliation, socioeconomic status, and nationality). Participating in activities with diverse groups of people builds cultural awareness and allows you to learn how to work with people who are different from you–which is arguably an essential skill for the real world. The activity doesn’t have to be political in nature, it can be joining a book club, participating in a religious organization, volunteering, or a group based on a hobby. 

Idea #3: The way that we talk to each other about politics also matters. We should look to gain an understanding of another perspective as opposed to winning a debate. According to a Pew Research study, 59% of Americans find political conversations to be stressful or frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be like this. The easy way out would be to not talk about politics–but that’s not always possible. So, let’s look at some of the ways that we can navigate these conversations. (Insert random conversation example).