Press Theory & Democracy Blog

On Sunday, Sept. 24, hundreds of players in the National Football League (NFL) took a stand against the President of the United States, by taking a knee together. This was not the first time a peaceful protest has occurred in the NFL, but it did have the greatest magnitude. It all started a little over a year ago when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem in a preseason game. He sat, he did not kneel. Photo courtesy of YouTube Then he sat again. And again. Until someone noticed and pointed the camera at Kaepernick. This led to millions of people seeing him and getting mad that he did not stand for the national anthem. Many articles were published and reporters ranted about his decision to sit on TV. Then he was joined by teammate Eric Reid and they began to kneel. More players joined kneeling, including rival team Seattle Seahawks' safety Earl Thomas. The fact that two rival teams could have players joining on the field for ...

I have started this blog for my Press Theory and Democracy class. It will focus on how social media affects political opinion of citizens of the U.S. today. I have chosen this topic specifically because of the election last year when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the United States presidency. He was not expected to win and up until the day of the election- Clinton was projected to defeat him by a healthy margin. Then the unthinkable happened, he won. Well, he won the electoral vote. Photo courtesy of Amazon.com In her new book, Clinton disclosed what happened and the reasons of why she lost the election. Most of it focuses on how the Russian government "hacked" Facebook and other social media to share negative ads on her so people would vote for Trump. Social media plays a vast role in American politics today. Even if you think that you won't change your mind just based on a Tweet or a Facebook post by a relative, you are still consuming tons of po...