Political Cartoon Analysis Assignment

For the actual blog posts you will be required to create for this assignment, please adhere to the following guidelines, which you will also receive in paper form in class:

The purpose of this assignment is for you to explore the wide range of contemporary political cartoons that are produced in reaction to the changing daily political landscape. You are asked to find one political cartoon every week that is in some way connected to a discussion or topic mentioned in class. 

So you should follow these steps, every week, in posting to your blog for this assignment. Posts must be created by Wednesday at 7pm, and will be graded by Friday. Blogs will be checked and graded each week.

1) Find a political cartoon on the internet, published within the past week. Useful places to find cartoons could be http://cagle.com/, http://www.economist.com/, http://www.nytimes.com/, http://www.washingtonpost.com/, http://www.politico.com/, or where ever else you would like to find them.

2) Post that cartoon on your blog. This can be as simple as copying and pasting the cartoon, or you may embed the image if you would prefer. To do this, find the cartoon on the internet. Right click (or on a mac, Control-click) on the cartoon you would like to use, and copy the URL.

Then, when writing your blog post, click on the insert image link above the text box (it looks like a little picture), select "From a URL", and past the URL from the cartoon's website into the appropriate box.

3) Answer the following questions about the cartoon:

• Identify the cartoon caption and/or title. Why are those words being used to describe the cartoon?
• What objects, symbols, or people are represented in the cartoon? What do you think the artist means?
• Describe the action taking place in the cartoon.
• Explain the message of the cartoon. What ideological perspective is represented by the cartoonist?
• How does this cartoon relate to a current political event? How does it relate to our in class discussions?
• How does satire and irony influence the topics covered in the cartoon?

4) Make sure to include where the cartoon came from, and when it was published. For instance, the above cartoon was published in The Denver Post on 2/17/2011, and I found it on http://cagle.com/news/MubarakQuits/main.asp/.