Each question is to be answered thoroughly.
#1 The federalist system that was implemented by the founders is a controversial system. There are those who feel it is good, and they usually argue that states with smaller populations would essentially be disenfranchised if we had a non-federalist, general democracy. On the other hand, there are those who feel that it is an inherently unfair system because in many ways it is undemocratic.
For example, California, with an approximate population of 39 million, has the same representation in the senate as does Wyoming, whose population is around 570,00. Where do you stand on this issue? Explain your answer.
#2 Like many of the basic American rights established in the Bill of Rights, the celebrated first amendment guarantee of free speech is considered by the scholarly community to be one of the essential foundational institutional guarantees in any functioning democracy. Making the society at large a “marketplace of ideas” where different political, religious, and cultural systems could coexist and compete for popular approval is at the heart of the First Amendment.
In recent years, the rise to prominence of the internet, smartphones, and social media have provided an entire new arena of virtual public discourse. Many social and political critics have suggested that the very nature of our social bonds have been fundamentally altered by the rise of social media and its impact on political awareness and the “de-humanized” indirect nature of much social communication today.
In your initial post address the following:
A) There is no shortage of hot debates about how (or even if) the major social media firms like Twitter and Facebook should be performing “content moderation.” Content moderation is the attempt to provide broad screening of social media sites to identify and block posts that violate the acceptable content policies of these social media sites.
B) But who should be empowered to decide what is “acceptable” speech and what is not?
C) Professional ethicists or CFOs at Silicon Valley Firms? The US Government? The People writ large?
D) How can we balance the rights of private non-governmental entities like Facebook with the threat to social cohesion that some of the social media platforms have been accused of fomenting?
E) Should Companies like Facebook and Twitter be forced to guarantee free speech just as the government is compelled to do? Why or why not?
#3 Immigration reform and the rights of undocumented immigrants continue to be topics of concern for the states and federal government. Some states have passed laws restricting the rights of undocumented immigrants to work or receive benefits.
A) To what extent should undocumented immigrants have civil rights, like the right to vote, work, receive an education, or receive federal and state benefits?
B) Do you think the Constitution protects undocumented immigrants’ civil rights?
C) What about the rights of undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country by their parents when they were children?
#4 Selective perception and selective exposure. Two concepts that students of political communication study are selective perception and selective exposure.
A) Are you guilty of engaging in either of these processes?
B) How do these information-processing factors explain Your news habits?
C) How do these habits affect the ability of news to influence people’s opinions?
References:
The textbook is Benjamin Ginsberg, Theodore J. Lowi, Margaret Weir, Caroline J. Tolbert, Andrea L. Campbell, and Robert J. Spitzer, We the People: An Introduction to American Politics (14th Essentials Edition) (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2023)
