COMMUNICATION FINAL PAPER!!! FOR Dr.ROCAL ONLY!!!!!!

Agenda

❖ 1) Reviewing Happiness & The Good Life

❖ 2) Civic Engagement ❖ ++++ Break ++++ ❖ 3) Watching Syria’s War ❖ 4) Exam #3 Outline &

Expectations

Reviewing Happiness ❖ Happiness is easier to experience

than to define. ❖ This is because people have

different ideas - what we might call discordant definitions - both about what end state of happiness looks like AND the means used to get there.

❖ V.J. McGill’s definition: “A lasting state of affairs in which the most favorable ratio of satisfied desires to desires is realized.”

Assessing happiness: 3 Questions

❖ Question 1: Are people the best judges of their own happiness?

❖ Question 2: Is happiness a fleeting moment or a life well lived?

❖ Question 3: Is happiness linked with virtue? That is, can one be happy without being ethical?

Civic Engagement & The Good Life

❖ Civic engagement: The ways in which citizens participate in the life of a community in order to improve its conditions.

❖ What role does civic engagement in shaping the good life?

Civic Engagement & The Good Life

❖ Possibilities: Citizens can participate in a number of communities (local, national, global) in a variety of ways (social networking, group advocacy, etc.)

❖ Limitations: Citizens today know less about civics, participate less often in civic activities, and therefore engage in civic action less often.

Civic Engagement: Limitations

❖ News consumption and political knowledge is declining.

❖ Group membership is falling.

Civic Engagement: Possibilities

❖ Perhaps things aren’t so bad! ❖ Today, people have a greater

number of ways in which to participate and can do so across a range of communities.

❖ Increasingly common to use personalized forms of communication that bypass traditional news media.

What role does civic engagement play in shaping the good life?

The ethics of civic engagement

❖ Roger Silverstone, UK academic 1945-2006.

❖ Media and Morality - his last book and an attempt to develop an ethics for civic engagement in a globalized but fractured world.

The ethics of engagement: Key terms

❖ Mediapolis: “The mediated space of appearance in which the world appears and in which the world is constituted.”

❖ Cosmopolitanism: Being rooted in a shared world but inhabiting very different positions within it. The cosmopolitan is obligated to listen to the various other positions that appear in the mediapolis.

Implications for civic engagement

❖ 1) The good life is not simply a subjective desire but requires listening to the demands and statements of others.

❖ 2) Civic engagement demands attention now, in the moment.

❖ 3) Happiness is not possible without ethics.

Agenda

❖ 1) Reviewing Happiness & The Good Life

❖ 2) Civic Engagement ❖ ++++ Break ++++

❖ 3) Watching Syria’s War ❖ 4) Exam #3 Outline &

Expectations

Video

❖ If London were Syria. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fSIpARmq2WI

❖ 1) What are some potential benefits of this video?

❖ 2) What are some potential harms of this video?

❖ 3) In your view, what are alternative ways to get people to engage with international issues?