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The marble chambers of Congress are now full-time reelection centers. The ranks of the press corps in Washington have been decimated since the 1980s, and lawmakers are gladly filling the void by becoming the first-person story tellers of Capitol Hill. Everyone bemoans witnessing what is arguably the most hyper-partisan Congress in the nation’s history, but few understand the technological underpinnings of the devolution of what was once hailed as the world’s greatest deliberative body. While the Constitution was crafted explicitly to provide space for great minds to debate, the constraints built into the current system leave lawmakers no distance from interest groups, wealthy donors, and angry voters who often receive only a portion of the story from their increasingly partisan sources of news, including the lawmakers themselves. But new media hasn’t just impacted Congress. The White House and Executive Branch agencies have latched on to new forms of media to reach broader audiences. The Supreme Court seems to be the last holdout when it comes to accessibility and transparency, but they have their reasons. This course will explore the history of how politicians and the government interact with the public, while examining the rapid evolution of government and political communications in recent years. It will also examine proposals to make the government more transparent, technologically advanced and less focused on speed. This course counts towards the Concentration in Political Communications