Questions+to+ask+when+viewing+an+editorial+cartoon

Modern American political cartoons have been around since the nineteenth century. The increase in newspaper and magazine circulation in the 1800's provided a rich environment for the rise and use of political cartoons. Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler penned many popular cartoons advocating social reform. People with minimal reading abilities could understand and relate to a format that communicated powerful ideas in a humorous, enlightened manner. Symbols, caricature, drawings, and exaggerations drawn by the cartoonist, point out the themes and problems of that historical era. Political cartoons play an important part in telling the history of a era.

Political cartoons serve to make people think about political and government issues by:
 * providing readers with additional viewpoints
 * assuming the reader has enough background knowledge about the issues to understand the message
 * emphasizing one side of an issue or concern
 * utilizing humor
 * relying on drawings to make a point

Some of the benefits of using political cartoons in the classroom are that they can:
 * 1) promote interest in political issues
 * 2) help develop students' analytical thinking skills
 * 3) encourage creativity

Cartoonists use the following persuasive techniques to create humor:


 * s****ymbolism** - using an object to stand for an idea.
 * caricature** - exaggerating a physical feature or habit: big nose, bushy eyebrows, large ears, baldness.
 * captioning and labels** - used for clarity and emphasis.
 * analogy** - a comparison between two unlike things that share some characteristics.
 * irony** - the difference between the way things are and the way things should be or the way things are expected to be.
 * juxtaposition** - positioning people or objects near each other, side-by-side.
 * exaggeration** - overstating or magnifying a problem.

Above from http://slo.neric.org/cartoons/intro-slo.htm