A Raleigh-area professor came to N.C. State Monday to address problems with politics, specifically how the general public tends to be uninformed despite being bombarded by political advertisements and information. 

David McLennan, a professor at William Peace University, kicked off COM week with a lecture entitled “The Sagging State of Political Communications in North Carolina.” 

 Data show that voters have become significantly less informed about the actual platforms of political figures for numerous reasons, according to McLennan, who said we’re at a crucial turning point—not only in politics—but in the way it’s presented to the public and coming generations.  

McLennan told the audience, so far, $10 million have been spent for the United States Senate race.  He explained that this is due to many trends in the way that political messages have been exploited lately.  

Several trends involved the balkanization of political communication such as politicians only communicating with others who have the same views.  

“It makes sense that people who support President [Barack] Obama would follow significantly more close to his messages as opposed to someone who does not support him,” McLennan said.

Another trend, according to McLennan, is the decreasing amount of actual substance in political messages and the increasing amount of almost personal stabs from one politician to another.  

There was also a lot of attention to the trend that people have started paying more attention to the medium as opposed to the actual message.  To explain this concept, McLennan used the example of the episode in Between Two Ferns, where host Zack Galifianakis interviewed Obama. According to McLennan, most people watched the interview for its entertainment value, as opposed to the Obama’s plug about Obamacare and Healthcare.gov. 

Taking a more optimistic turn, McLennan explained how the newer generations are tired of the negativity and shear numbers of political attack advertisements, especially during election season. McLennan predicts that this new trend will start, in his opinion, the “fourth period” of political communication.

McLennan described the first period of political communication to be the Golden Age, right after WWII, leading up to the 1960’s.  In this period, political communication was largely controlled by political parties, newspapers and people actually watching and attending political debates.

The second period of political communication, according to McLennan, lasted until the late nineties.  During this time, the main venues for political communication were television and talk radio.  The newspapers were changing the name of the game with political stabs and what really sent us into the present period was the internet.

After the 1990’s and into current times, McLennan described how the internet and technology in general have completely taken over political communication.  

He then explained how the negative change in the presentation of messages to the public concerning politics has started this craving in younger generations of substantial messages that they can agree with. 

McLennan said the public seems to be growing tired of attacking political opponents and wants to change this to rallying behind messages they agree with.  Using the conflict in Egypt as an example, McLennan shed light on how people were more concerned about using sites such as Twitter to get their message out in opposition to the glamour of these social networking sites.

McLennan encouraged the audience to actively take part and push this new period of communication.

“Stay optimistic about the message,” McLennan said.

COM Week continues Tuesday with a lecture about the Gettysburg Address. 

The lecture will discuss the relevance of this historical to today’s society, politically and rhetorically.