Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Political Attack Ads

"In political campaigns, an attack ad is an advertisement whose message is meant as a personal attack against another candidate or political party. Attack ads often form part of negative campaigning or smear campaigns, and in large or well-financed campaigns, may be disseminated via mass media.

An attack ad will generally unfairly criticize an opponent's political platform, usually by pointing out its faults. Often the ad will simply make use of innuendo, based on opposition research. Televised attack ads rose to prominence in the United States in the 1960s, and their use has gradually spread to other democratic countries since then, notably in Canada (see below)."

Wikipedia

Like or not Political Attack ads are very common in today's politics. While often informative they can be very petty, circumstantial, ridiculous, based mostly in half truths and honestly quite funny.

Spend some time looking at the Ads below. Find some other ones and post them as comments. What do you like or not like about them? What makes them interesting to you? Or just tell us what you think about them.

Anti-Harper


Anti-Ignatieff


Anti-Layton


Green Party Ad


Harper Breaks the Law??..


Look here to find a bunch
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/03/01/gerry-nicholls-political-ads-that-work-and-dont/

NDP Video gallery
http://www.ndp.ca/video/all/mPcCdsZz0kI

Liberal Youtube page
http://www.youtube.com/user/liberalvideo#p/u/1/o6hDv6gCe1I

Conservative Youtube page
http://www.youtube.com/user/cpcpcc

Green Party Youtube page
http://www.youtube.com/user/canadiangreenparty

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Government and Politics

Welcome back form the break and I hope you are all ready for the stretch run as we head towards the Provincial Exam. Alot has happened in Canadian Politics since we left for break so what a fitting time for us to be starting our Government and Politics unit. During our first class we will be focusing on ideologies and the political spectrum. In order to get a better understanding of those ideologies and where you might stand I want you to take a look at the assignment below.

Homework Assignment #1 of term 3 - this is instead of the first quiz


Go to http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and 'take the test'. It will take a bit of time to complete, so please allow yourself to be busy for some time. If you get stuck on any of the questions or the vocabulary, use http://www.dictionary.com/ or just give it your best guess. There are alot of questions, so your results shouldn't be affected too much.

Post your results, or if you don't feel comfortable letting others know what your results are post your thoughts.

Challenge Activity: Read over the website explanation on ideology as it is quite thorough. We will be discussing this next day in class.

*****If this is completed before next class you get bonus marks*****