Skip to main content Skip to navigation
CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

Washington secretary of state race heats up ahead of vote

Part of Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s challenge in keeping her office in Republican hands arises from the political divide brought about by the presidential election that could have more of an impact on state races than in previous years, said Cornell Clayton, a political science professor at Washington State University.

Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

“You have someone at the top of the ticket that we know is turning off large numbers of independent voters,” he said, referring to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Find out more

Outside groups behind negative ad influx

Polls of Ohio residents found an overwhelming disgust this election season over negative campaigning.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

Negativity in moderation in fact can be useful, said Travis Ridout, WSU professor of political science and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which has tracked advertising in federal elections since 2010. “It helps voters draw a contrast between candidates. [But] for other people,” he said, “it can be demobilizing.”

Ridout, whose courses at WSU cover the use of media in political campaigns, said the crush of attack ads from outside groups forces candidates to fire back or risk losing ground. “You’re kind of in a vicious cycle of attack, attack, attack, which makes it even more negative,” he said.

Find out more

WHIO

Why Clinton Is Hitting Trump on Outsourcing

It’s about something bigger than white working-class votes.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has chosen a central line of attack for its commercials, recently flooding the airwaves with ads focused on her opponent’s outsourcing jobs to overseas countries.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

“Some people might say that Donald Trump is looking out for the average guy,” says Travis Ridout, a political science professor who studies campaign advertising at Washington State University. “These ads make you stop and think. Is that really the case?”

Find out more

New Republic

 

Why These U.S. College Students Are Carrying Sex Toys On Campus

University of Texas students protesting the state’s new gun law—which allows anyone over 21 with a state-issued handgun license to carry a concealed gun on public school campuses—are using sex toys to make their point.

TV Reed
TV Reed

TV Reed, a WSU professor of English and American Studies who has studied culture in protest movements, said that while the protest effort “will be ridiculed by some,” it’s important to remember that “now-revered figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King were also ridiculed for their symbolic protests.” And the approach is creating an easy entry point for students to get involved, he said.

“The protest is already successful because the amusing, theatrical plan has drawn far more attention to the issue of open carry than any letter to the editor or more conventional demonstration ever would,” Reed said.

Find out more

Refinery 29

Book to expose religious spies working for U.S. government in World War II

A new book, tentatively titled “(Un)Holy Spies: Religion and Espionage in World War II” by Washington State University (WSU) history professor Matthew Sutton, will uncover the role of religious figures and clergy in secret U.S. government operations during the time of President Franklin Roosevelt. It will be published in 2019.

Matthew Avery Sutton
Matthew A. Sutton

The book has been granted a $50,000 Public Scholar Program grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities, part of the $79 million the agency granted for 290 humanities projects and programmes in the U.S.

Sutton has discovered never-before-seen archival materials that detail a “secret army” whose activities “laid the foundation for the development of the CIA and continue to influence U.S. policy today,” he said. The NEH grant will allow him to continue “doing cutting-edge research and making it accessible to the broader public,” he said.

Find out more

Christian Today
WSU News