Editorial Cartoon Analysis

Editorial Cartoon Analysis

Assignment/Activity Title— Editorial Cartoon Analysis

Year— Sophomore

Skill— Research

Portfolio Category— Social Awareness     

For this project, we researched a current political issue and picked six different cartoons about it, from six different editorial cartoonists. I decided to pick the botched execution in Oklahoma, and the death penalty in general since it's a topic that's caused a lot of debate recently (not just between political ideologies, either, but between everyone).

 

     This project was an exercise in complete social awareness, primarily because I had to choose different cartoonists for each analysis. This meant that some of the cartoonists I chose were conservative (while I'm more liberal), and held views on the death penalty that I didn't necessarily agree with. Getting to see their portrayal of this issue really helped me understand more about the topic - because until you understand the arguments against your side of a concept, you can't really understand the concept at all.

     These analysis also made me realize that people cannot be categorized by political ideology. Growing up in Silver Spring and Takoma Park (and in CAP), it's extremely easy to be blinded by the idea that all conservatives are 'evil,' and that liberals are right and morally correct 100% of the time. However, that's just not true. Politicians - and citizens - on both sides have their respective strengths and weaknesses. Even if someone disagrees with you on a large issue, like our defense budget, they may agree with you on education reform or another issue. And with this topic, lethal injections and the death penalty, it's almost impossible to divine a clean ideological split. There are too many conservatives and liberals on both side of the issue to do that.

     Another reason this contributes to my social awareness is that it shows that ideologies are not that simple. All an ideology is is an opinion, one agreed with on a large scale and used to define a set group of people. Once we've discerned this, then, we can look closer at people's unique ideological beliefs. Humans inherently believe different things from each other, which is part of what makes us unique. However, it's interesting to see which issues create the most controversy in our society - and this is one of them.

     So againm through this project I not only learned more about the complexity of political ideologies, but also about human nature and the controversies it causes.