AP Gov
Political Socialization and the reinforcement feedback loop
1. Choose two current topics to investigate for this activity. The following might be good possibilities:
- Welfare
- Student Loan Debt
- Global Warming
- Food stamps
- Medicare/Medicaid
- Social Security
- Immigration
- Patient Protection Act (Obamacare)
- National Debt
- Syria/Afghanistan/Iraq
- Obama-Care
2. For each topic find an article from both a liberal and a conservative site (print the articles)
3. Read the articles and identify which you agree with (the conservative or liberal viewpoint)
4. Ask 2 family members and 2 peers to read the articles and to indicate which they agree with. Do not reveal the sources (i.e. don’t tell them, “this one’s liberal and that one’s conservative.”)
Do your family and peers identify with the same articles that you did?
5. Find polling data on one of your topics.
- Does the polling data reveal a distinct liberal/conservative divide on the issue?
- Which viewpoint is in the majority according to the polls?
“liberal” Media
Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/
The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Politico http://www.politico.com/
The Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/e
The Nation http://www.thenation.com/
Move On http://front.moveon.org/
“Conservative” Media
Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/
The Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/
Free Republic http://freerepublic.com/tag/*/index
Glen Beck http://www.glennbeck.com/
Real Clear Politics http://www.realclearpolitics.com/welcomead/?ref=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Red State http://www.redstate.com/