PADM GPP 4419: Communicating public policy in the digital eraNew York University | Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service

7E12 (Fairchild building) room 125 Summer 2018 6-8 pm ET: Wednesday May 23 – Wednesday June 27

Office hours: Tuesday from 4 to 7 pm ET in the Puck building. If that time doesn’t work for you, please feel free to send me a note. I’m happy to meet whenever it’s mutually convenient.

COURSE SUMMARY

In this class you will focus on translating policy analysis and implementation tools into actionable agents of social change. As such, one of the largest challenges is convincing a skeptical public that the benefits of a policy change or new service outweigh the status quo. In this class we will examine how government entities use digital and other communications tools to attempt to tackle this task, using the Obama White House as a case study. This class will give you an in-depth look at how comms tools allow the government to challenge traditional public policy implementation problems. Taught by a member of the first White House Office of Digital Strategy, we will primarily examine first-person narratives and content from actual public policy rollouts during the Obama administration, as well as some case studies from other successful (and unsuccessful) policy campaigns in the public and private sector. This class will be useful to a broad range of students who are interested in policy implementation, policy communication, and successful social change.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course you should be able to:

Identify the problematic areas of policy implementation, and offer strategies on how digital communication tools can help alleviate some of those problems

Compare and contrast digital communication tools and tactics with traditional communication tools and tactics

Understand the impact digital communication tools have on agenda setting, framing, stakeholders, institutions, leadership, and public perception

Showcase how both the Obama and Trump administrations have used communication tools to help implement policies

Construct an argument for or against the use of communication tools to promote and protect public policy

Communicate policy ideas around a policy initiative Recognize how and why the media communicate ideas in the 21st century – and why it

matters for your policy proposals Explain how we learn about the world around us – and explain how that might impact a

policy proposal

COURSE POLICIES

Class participationYou are expected to participate. The class will depend on students reading, analyzing, and interpreting the materials before class, and coming to class ready to discuss the problems identified and possible solutions. Therefore, you are expected to engage in this process. You should attend all classes having prepared the cases (where applicable) and readings, and should be able to participate in a class discussion about them in every class.

Assignments and evaluationClass participation (20%): Participation, as stressed above, is very important to the style of this class. Not attending class and failing to participate will hurt your participate grade.

Policy comms evaluation (20%): The policy comms evaluation is an examination of a policy that has really failed from a communications perspective. Your finished product should be approximately 2 pages and should be designed to showcase exactly why that policy implementation did not work – from a communications perspective. You should pick a policy that was enacted during the digital era (roughly, a policy put in place under the Bush, Obama, or Trump administrations). Due: week 3. Please submit to me via email.

Policy framing write ups (2 at 10 % each for a total of 20%): I’d like for you to take a policy issue currently in the news cycle – whatever you’d like, please just link a few articles describing the policy issue – and write up a short analysis of that issue’s media and public framing. Due: twice throughout the course. You will do two total of these (10% each). Feel free to turn them in whenever you’d like, but please be aware you cannot turn in two during the last week. Please submit to me via email.

Digital memo (20%): The digital memo should be designed like a memo from you (a consultant) to your client (a government) advising the government apparatus on the most effective way to use the internet and digital tools to talk to the public about a specific policy agenda item. You should remember to cover social media, platforms, strategy, video, audio, and the news cycle. Your finished memo should be 3 pages and should be designed to help the government solve an implementation problem. Due: week 4. Please submit to me via email.

Group project (20%): In the policy world you don’t always work alone – teamwork is often instrumental in accomplishing your goals, and we are going to apply that same logic in here. You will work in groups of 3-4 to come up with a digital policy rollout. Your group will be charged with thinking through the entire process, from implementation to communication to execution. This task is designed to model what a policy team may actually do in Congress, at an agency, or in the White House.

You may choose between two different prompts:

1. In 2009 President Barack Obama attended the UN Copenhagen climate summit. Following the global summit, President Obama announced that the United States would pledge to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 emissions levels by the year 2020. Additionally, the countries party to the accords – including the US – agreed that they would recognize that there was a scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

To meet this target, the US must focus on: scaling up public resources to help offset emissions, increasingly opening up financing for “carbon neutral” projects, and getting buy in from public and private stakeholders who must advance this agenda themselves. How might you communicate the implementation of this pledge to the stakeholders who must participate?

2. Antibiotic resistant bacteria – defined as “germs that don’t respond to the drugs developed to kill them” – is a growing a persistent threat. In the US alone, around 23,000 people die annually from once-treatable illnesses caused by antibiotic resistant infections. In 2015 the White House rolled out a policy plan to try to help combat antibiotic resistance. The effort, which you can read about here, mostly focused on creating a preferential market for livestock raised with responsible antibiotic usage and on private sector commitments. How might you devise a plan to communicate the implementation of this new policy to the public, to stakeholders who have agreed to participate, and to future stakeholders who might jump on board?

In your final report, you should present a digital policy rollout plan that has incorporated ideas, perspectives, and elements from the legal team, the policy team, and the digital team. We will discuss this project further in week 2. Due: week 6. Please submit to me via email.

COURSE SCHEDULE

WEEK 1: Wednesday May 23: Social media in a public policy context

Learning objective: In the 21st century social media impacts policy in three major ways. Citizens use social media to learn about policy. Government organizations are on social media. Political leaders are on social media and they use it to influence policy and to engage with constituents to better understand their desires. We will also look at a few case studies of the impact social media can have on the policy agenda of a president.

Learning objective: We will look at some best practices for the five main social media platforms today – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Medium – so that we understand how these digital platforms really work.

No readings due today, first day of class! Please see the optional readings at the end if you’re interested in further reading on topics we’ve discussed today.

WEEK 2: Wednesday May 30: Agenda setting and framing

Learning objective: Agenda setting impacts the policy process – especially in the digital era. The proliferation of digital technology has changed the ability of an administration to set the agenda (or not). As a case study we will look at how social media is changing war in the 21st century.

Learning objective: Framing and perception are key issues to understand in the digital era. Perception of implementation and execution are sometimes more important than reality. We will look at the ACA as a case study, and we will examine why the ACA had so much trouble at its outset, and what digital strategies President Obama used to address the perceptual problems. We will also look at how the Obama administration attempted to reframe the issue of climate change.

Illing, Sean. (8 December 2017). War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. Vox. Retrieved here.

(11 March 2014). Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Episode 18 President Barack Obama. Funny or Die. Retrieved here.

Fiegerman, Seth. (11 March 2014). How President Obama ended up on ‘Between Two Ferns.’ Mashable. Retrieved here.

Nakamura, David. (6 October 2017). How an Oval Office meeting led to a Trump tweet that changed US policy toward Venezuela. Washington Post. Retrieved here.

Lee, Y K and Chun-Tuan Chang. (January 2010). Framing public policy: The impacts of political sophistication and the nature of public policy. The Social Science Journal.

Sayre, Ben, Leticia Bode, Dhavan Shah, Dave Wilcox, Chirag Shah. (July 2010). Agenda setting in a digital age: Tracking attention to California Proposition 8 in social media, online news, and conventional news. Policy and Internet.

Neuman, W. Russell, Lauren Guggenheim, S. Mo Jang, and Soo Young Bae. (26 March 2014). The dynamics of public attention: Agenda-setting theory meets big data. Journal of Communication.

Grosbeak, Jacob and Ahmed al-Rawi. (4 September 2013). Public sentiment and critical framing in social media content during the 2012 US presidential campaign. Social Science Computer Review.

Muniz, Carlos, Salvador Alvidrez, and Nilsa Tellez. (2015). Shaping the online public debate: The relationship between the news framing and the expropriation of YPF and readers’ comments. International Journal of Communication. 3245-3263.

THR. (25 September 2016). President Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio to discuss climate change at White House’s inaugural SXSL festival. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved here.

Davis, Julie Hirschfield. (30 August 2015). Obama’s Alaska visit puts climate, not energy, in forefront. New York Times. Retrieved here.

The White House. (10 July 2015). Sir David Attenborough and President Obama: The full interview. Retrieved here.

(28 June 2015). Barack Obama turns tables in David Attenborough climate change interview. Reuters. Retrieved here.

WEEK 3: Wednesday June 6: Narrative building and the long arc of policy change

Learning objective: Beyond social media, policy change takes a long time and individual marches rarely have an immediate effect. But especially in the long term communications messaging matters. We will use the opioid epidemic and gun control as opposite case studies through which we examine how to build a narrative and bend a difficult to move policy lever.

Egan, Jennifer. (9 May 2018). Children of the opioid epidemic. New York Times Magazine. Retrieved here.

Okie, Susan. (26 January 2009). The epidemic that wasn’t. New York Times. Retrieved here.

Winerip, Michael. (20 May 2013). Revisiting the ‘crack babies’ epidemic that was not. New York Times. Retrieved here. (Please watch the video)

Kerr, Peter. (1987). New violence seen in users of cocaine. New York Times. Retrieved here.

Lopez, German. (4 May 2018). How the NRA resurrected the second amendment. Vox. Retrieved here.

Bogus, Carl T. (October 2000). The history and politics of second amendment scholarship: A primer. Chicago-Kent Law Review. Volume 76 Issue 1. Retrieved here.

The Economist. (16 November 2017). What does America’s Second Amendment really say? The Economist. Retrieved here.

Barron, Dennis. (nd). Guns and grammar: the linguistics of the second amendment. Essay from the University of Illinois collection. Retrieved here.

Parkinson, Joe and Drew Hinshaw. (24 December 2017). Freedom for the world ‘s most famous hostages came at a heavy price. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved here.

WEEK 4: Wednesday June 13: First person narratives and their impact on social movements

Learning objective: We will examine how to move the policy lever forward by examining some relatively recent first person social movements. We will continue to look at narrative building by examining narratives like: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, the Women’s March, March for Our Lives, and the March for Science.

Saada Saar, Malika. (18 April 2018). Visualizing the #metoomovement using google trends. Google public policy blog. Retrieved here.

Dell’Antonia, KJ. (27 May 2014). With a hashtag, women take on our fears for our daughters and ourselves: #yesallwomen. New York Times parenting blog. Retrieved here.

Stockman, Farah. (15 January 2018). One year after women’s march, more activism but less unity. New York Times. Retrieved here.

Witt, Emily. (25 March 2018). The March for Our Lives presents a radical new model for youth protest. The New Yorker. Retrieved here.

Bromwich, Jonah Engel. (7 March 2018). How the Parkland students got so good at social media. New York Times. Retrieved here.

Healy, Jack. (22 May 2018). ‘Almost no one agrees with us’: When rural students emulate Parkland. New York Times. Retrieved here.

Yong, Ed. (7 March 2017). What exactly are people marching for when they March for Science? The Atlantic. Retrieved here.

Resnick, Brian. (22 April 2017). The March for Science on Earth Day, explained. Vox. Retrieved here.

Molteni, Megan. (13 April 2018). How the March for Science became a movement. Wired. Retrieved here.

Roston, Michael. (17 April 2017). The March for Science: Why some are going, and some are sitting out. New York Times. Retrieved here.

St Fleur, Nicholas. (17 April 2017). Scientists and activists look beyond the March for Science. New York Times. Retrieved here.

Mervis, Jeffrey. (4 April 2018). 2018 March for Science will be far more than street protests. Retrieved here.

WEEK 5: Wednesday June 20: How do entertainment and the media play a role?

Learning objective: Entertainment and media are important influences on how we construct our society. We will examine how television and media in the 21st century are tools for creating support for public policy. Most of us consume media and entertainment unfiltered, and as such many of our ideas about culture, society, and things we haven’t yet encountered come to us there. We will explore how policy analysts can use television, film, and media as a mechanism for creating a shift in public opinion.

Schmidt, Christine. (16 February 2018). What strategies work best for increasing trust in local newsrooms/ Trusting News has some ideas. Neiman Lab. Retrieved here.

Garber, Megan. (4 October 2017). Black-ish embraces the urgency of history. The Atlantic. Retrieved here.

Chow, Andrew R. (11 March 2018). ABC pulls ‘black-ish’ episode over ‘creative differences.’ The New York Times. Retrieved here.

Freeman, Joanne B. (11 November 2015). How Hamilton uses history. Slate. Retrieved here.

Garber, Megan. (12 January 2017). One Day at a Time is a sitcom that doubles as a civics lesson. The Atlantic. Retrieved here.

Shear, Michael D. (21 May 2018). Coming to Netflix: The Obamas sign deal to produce shows. New York Times. Retrieved here.

WEEK 6: Wednesday June 27: Rapid activism around short term goals is great – but is there a future?

Learning objective: Technology allows for rapid activism around short-term goals. Without a focus on scaling this energy a question remains regarding how viable digital efforts might be. We will examine how and why digital movements succeed or fail, and we will think about what this means for an increasingly digital world.

Schradie, Jen. (1 February 2018). The digital activism gap: how class and costs shape online collective action. Social Problems. Volume 65 Issue 1. Retrieved here.

Gladwell, Malcolm. (4 October 2010). Small Change. The New Yorker. Retrieved here. Howard, Philip N., Saiph Savage, Claudia Flores Saviaga, Carlos Toxtli, and Andres

Monroy-Hernández. (29 January 2017). Social Media, Civic Engagement, and the Slacktivism Hypothesis: Lessons From Mexico’s ‘El Bronco.’ Journal of International Affairs. Volume 70 Issue 1. Pages 55–73. Retrieved here.

And, just for fun! In case you’d like to learn more about:

Government officials on social media:

Netflix. I am the Ambassador. Retrieved here. Weiss-Meyer, Amy. (October 2016). Big in Denmark: The U.S. ambassador. The Atlantic.

Retrieved here. Schwartz, Felicia. (18 October 2016). Reality TV has fans keeping up with a diplomat.

Wall Street Journal. Retrieved here.

How world leaders are using social media to engage on policy:

The Economist. (8 February 2018). Asian leaders are in the vanguard of social media. The Economist. Retrieved here.

Lalancette, Mireille and Vincent Raynauld. (30 November 2017). The power of political image: Justin Trudeau, Instagram, and celebrity politics. American Behavioral Scientist. Retrieved here.

How political leaders are using social media to connect with constituents to bring more people into the arena:

Eilperin, Juliet. (26 May 2015). Here’s how the first president of the social media age has chosen to connect with Americans. Washington Post. Retrieved here.

How constituents are using social media to get policy change:

Welch, Chris. (4 March 2013). White House says ‘it’s time to legalize cell phone unlocking’ in official petition response. The Verge. Retrieved here.

Bessler, Abigail. (1 August 2014). Obama signs bill ‘unlocking’ cell phones. CBS News. Retrieved here.

Kiefer Lee, Kate. (6 February 2013). We the People 2.0 and why White House petitions matter. Forbes. Retrieved here.

How to strategically and tactically best use some of the digital platforms:

Hasnain, Zainab. (1 July 2017). How to use Instagram stories like a pro. The Verge. Retrieved here.

Segran, Elizabeth. (7 March 2018). 6 great ways to boost your brand with Instagram stories. Fast Company. Retrieved here.

Bhadwaj, Prachi. (22 May 2018). Instagram’s new ‘mute’ option will give you more control over your feed – here’s how it works. Business Insider. Retrieved here.

Lichterman, Joseph. (18 January 2018). How Vox uses Facebook groups to build community. Lenfest Institute. Retrieved here.

Quesenberry, Keith A. (2 January 2018). The basic social media mistakes companies still make. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved here.

Murphy, Mike. (4 October 2017). Snapchat has become the perfect tool for understanding tragedy. Quartz. Retrieved here.

Owen, Laura Hazard. (1 November 2017). Snap maps offered real-time coverage of Tuesday’s terror attacks in Manhattan (plus a lot of emoji). Nieman Lab. Retrieved here.

Warren, Anne Marie, Ainin Sulaiman, Noor Ismawati Jaafar. (2014 March). Facebook: The enabler of online civic engagement for activists. Computers in Human Behavior. 284-289.