A brief (ten page) selection from: From Actor to Object: Political Influence, Political Entertainers, and the Symbolic Construction of Rush Limbaugh During the 2008 US Presidential Election Andrew D. Horvitz COPYRIGHT 2015
Below is a writing sample from a research project that sought to understand how political entertainers, those public actors who claim authority from the world of entertainment, have political authority. Specifically, this research traced how a variety of media sources incorporated political talk show host and conservative icon, Rush Limbaugh. Analysis covers from 1990 through 2015.
Abstract:
This research highlights dynamics of American political culture contributing to the development of political talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh’s political influence. Current research suggests Limbaugh’s political capital is produced from an ability to generate valuable advertising space for media organizations, his role as an opinion leader of a politically active audience, or his position within mediated political networks. Regardless of explanation all assert that Limbaugh’s inclusion into national news and commentary legitimates and reflects Limbaugh’s pre-existing political capital.
The research presented here contends that the role of the press must be revaluated as a possible causal factor in establishing his political influence. Drawing from the analytical and empirical resources of Cultural Sociology this dissertation argues that cultural structures manifest in the press create a ‘public image’ of the talk show host. In this way Limbaugh is no longer just a political actor. He also becomes a symbolic political object. By richly recreating news and commentary centered on the 2008 US Presidential elections containing Limbaugh textual analysis can be used to provide evidence for the existence of these dynamics. In turn alternative explanations of Limbaugh’s influence in the US political public sphere, along with other political entertainers like him, can be further evaluated.
Framework Four – The Meaning of Politics or the Politics of Meaning:
Cultural Sociology emerged in the latter decades of the 20th century, and analytically orients towards how patterned signs, symbols, and collective meaning are created and structured independently of other social forces according to an immaterial internal logic. Culture, systematic patterned systems of meanings, is not dependent on other social forces or structures nor are merely internalized sets of values. Rather it is comprised of a system of autonomously structured meaning integral to creating and maintaining the social order while also allowing contingency and play in action. Analytically decoupled from other social structures and forces, culture independently impacts social outcomes, and is comparable to “social structures of a more material kind” (Alexander 2010 388). This conceptualization of culture describes the “strong” program of Cultural Sociology. The analytical framework provides an alternative to the various “sociology of culture” frameworks which formerly dominated the sociological literature. Instead of culture being understood as a result of other material processes it is conceptualized as operating by its own internal logic that in turn exerts an autonomous cultural force on other, more material structures and actors (Alexander 1990, 1998, 2003, 2006, 2010; Alexander and Jacobs 1998; Alexander, Jacobs, and Smith 2912; Back et al 2012; Bauman 1999; Kane 1992; Jacobs 2000, 2003a, 2005, 2007; Smith 1991, 1998, 2005; Somers 1995).[1]
Cultural sociology provides the analytical resources to rethink political sociology, and build on a concept of ‘cultural politics’. Perhaps most significant, it allows for the recognition that politics is “inherently symbolic – it is mired in meaning. … (and) conflict occurs over values and meanings rather than actual policy” (Back et al 2012 117). The constitution, negotiation, reconfiguration, and dissolution of social solidarity are foundational concerns a sociology of cultural politics. Capturing the autonomous collective meanings that embed and enchant these processes are essential for understanding contemporary political life.
The remainder of this section further outlines these dynamics which will set the stage for empirical research. First the usefulness of a cultural sociology for teasing out a ‘cultural politics’ will be discussed. Here the importance of meaning making and the symbolic contestation will be highlighted as integral to contemporary politics. Next, a more explicit discussion of how mass media plays a role as a primary communicative institution nested within civil society will be further teased out. It will be described as a key institution facilitating the role of the political entertainer to take part in cultural politics. The section will then close with suggestions on how this might be usefully applied to the case study here.
In this section a fourth analytical framework useful for studying the dynamics of Limbaugh’s political influence will be discussed. This work draws upon insights developed by “Cultural Sociology”, and is well suited to studying Limbaugh as a cultural object in press vis-à-vis the previously discussed frameworks. In doing so we can analytically support how symbolic elements presented in the public discussions of the talk show host contribute to and not just reflect popular perceptions.
Cultural Sociology has been used to study the public import of entertainers, and can also be readily extended to Limbaugh. Moreover, it helps better connect the research here to ongoing debates in political sociology. Let us now turn to some specifics.
An important concept for the politically focused scholarship of Cultural Sociology is “cultural politics”. This conceptualizes the relationships and structures of power as particular “articulations” of patterned affective meaning that comes to be “partial(ly) fix(ed)” (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001 113). Put another way cultural politics suggests that an integral dimension to politics and political processes is the interpretation of, and competition over, political meanings aimed at shaping power relations. Rather than drawing power from political economy, popular opinion, or positions tied together within inter-field networks political authority emerges from some form of “linguistic authority” (Baker 1990 5; Nash 2010 34-37). Actors, both individually and collectively, make sense of the political world, and in doing so attempt to steer it by defining the meaning structures “constitutive of our reality” (Nash 2010 30-31). Attention is shifted away from material structures or contexts, and towards the centrality of negotiations and contests over political meaning. This suggests that politics is at least in part structured by cultural dynamics that cannot be reduced to other social forces.
Culture does not only supplement political institutions or actions. It creates and steers political life. A variety of culturally defined “communicative encounters” are central actions to consider when studying questions invoking politics from this perspective (Cottle 2003, 2011 26, 2012). Collective meanings constructed and uttered by authorized speakers vying for the ability to create or define sets of symbols that undergird political discussion have strategic and organizational implications. The resultant dominant meaning structure have teeth in civil society and politics, and conflicts over the particulars of the articulations come to be “culturally defined and to some degree institutionally enforced” (Alexander 2006 30; Alexander, Jacobs, and Smith 2012; Back et. al 2010; Cottle 2003, 2006 2012; Laclau and Mouffe 2001; Nash 2010).
The Civil Sphere and its Communicative Institutions:
A concept gaining traction in political and cultural sociology, the “Civil Sphere”, is useful for the research here. The term describes the preeminent social arena where cultural politics takes place. It encompasses the sets of interconnected actors, practices, and institutions aimed at strengthening or weakening bonds of social solidarity. Within its boundaries a culturally based “civil power” is produced, and is aimed at influencing the “nonbureacratic top” of non-civil spheres, like the state. This becomes especially significant to sociologists interested in cultural politics because this is an example of political dynamics existing outside of the state yet still having the ability to influence state action (Alexander 2006).
The Civil Sphere is comprised of two sets of interrelated institutions. Regulative institutions seek access to state power through voting or legislating as to invoke its power of coercion. Legislatures, law, and political parties are all examples of differentiated regulative institutions capable of converting sentiments of solidarity into “government control” (Alexander 2006 71). On the other hand, communicative institutions organize
public discussion and debate, evaluate the applications of the norms of solidarity and civic inclusion, and articulate cultural structures giving political experiences meaning. They are comprised of mass media organizations and the public sphere. In a less material sense public opinion and the social space where public opinion is debated also fall within this category (Alexander 2006 40-45). It is the latter set of institutions we are most interested in.
Influence, rather than coercion, is the primary social force of communicative institutions. The two primary sub-institutions within them are mass media and the public sphere. Both organize a “symbolic forum” where the “interpretive authority” over public events and ideas are at stake. Both types of communicative institutions work in tandem, and ultimately the degree of social solidarity across a complex and diffuse society is one variable impacted by the outcomes of activity occurring within. Through the complimentary social processes binding the communicative institutions an imagined community is structured allowing participants to understand themselves as a “public”. They provide
mechanisms through which all claiming a stake in the Civil Sphere can be evaluated in terms of worthiness of civic inclusion (Alexander 2006). Let us now take each in turn.
The public sphere describes the sets of practices and spaces of public discussion and debate between private individuals. This is where ideas come under public scrutiny, collective decisions are negotiated, and public opinion is formed. Through the public sphere the “public” challenges the authority of the state demanding the latter justify its actions. Since meaning, rather than expertise, experience, or policy lies at the heart of political
life the political public sphere becomes an important location where cultural politics are practiced. “Publics”, the constituent bodies populating the public sphere, make broad political conversation possible as they perform acts of communication where the role of ‘reading’ as a private activity is complimented with a public act of mediated discussion .This provides a social mechanism through which the public exerts influence on state power (Habermas 1989; Warner 2005 10-13; 55-57).
Recent scholarship has furthered refined understandings of the public sphere were made. Two points are noteworthy. First, challenges to the idea of a single unified public sphere. Instead it has been convincingly suggested that a plurality of public spheres exist, and exert authority in varying degrees (Calhoun 1992 37; Eley 1992; Fraser 1992; Habermas 1996; Jacobs 2000, 2005; Ryan 1992; Warner 2005). It might be best to think of the relationships of public sphere as one that is fragmented but not fractured. Even though multiple public spheres exist they often orient towards a delimited number of more encompassing public spheres. Dominant and subordinate publics tend to insert themselves within a hegemonic “official” or “political” public sphere. The “political” public sphere serves as the gravitational center around which a “field of discursive connections” is created (Taylor 1992 229). The debates amongst and between the constellation of public spheres are aimed at fortifying or reconstituting access to state power along with defining and articulating public opinion (Alexander 2006; Alexander, Jacobs, and Smith 2012; Jacobs 2003, 2005, 2007; Jacobs and Townsley 2011; Taylor and Gutmann 1992).
A second related revision rethinks how debate is carried out within public spheres. Habermas developed a model of “Communicative Action” whereby logic and rationality ostensibly determine the merit of an argument. The most logical and rational articulation in a debate would dominate the public sphere. If free from distortion all participants would subsequently adopt this ‘best’ position because discussion and debate would invariably
convince one of its soundness. Consensus inexorably emerges, and results in political emancipation and empowerment (Habermas 1981, 1989, 1996).
However, analytical positions in opposition to the theory of “Communication Action” have criticized it for being overly normative. Actually existing public spheres, both historical and contemporary, do not actually operate under such conditions despite normative commitments. Rather public spheres function as an “agonistic arena(s) for aesthetic politics and symbolic contestation” amongst a variety of engaged actors competing for civil power (Alexander 2006; Alexander and Jacobs 1998; Back et. al 2012; Jacobs 2000 25, 2003, 2005, 2007, Nash 2010; Smith 2000).[1]
A second communicative institution of the civil sphere, mass media, works alongside the public sphere. The term signifies the processes, organizations, and technological platforms facilitating communication that reaches broad audiences across space and time.[2] A core insight about mass media developed by cultural sociology is the
indispensable role it plays in narrating political life. It textualizes actors and events into patterned symbolic forms that are in turn built into broader narratives resonating with collective experiences. Mass media provides a key social interface allowing civic and associational life to interact with one another and the state. By constructing and re-constructing stories about national politics this institution is integral in developing a “strategic interplay of interests, values, knowledge and sources of authority and power” that is used to help organize public spheres (Long and Lui 2009 80). [3] As a result mass media acts as both a resource, and a public forum providing a common discursive base for ongoing iterative civic engagement (Alexander 2005;Jacobs 1996, 2000; Schudson 2011).
Cultural sociology has made the conceptualization of mass media more nuanced by placing it along a continuum between the poles of “chronicling” and “storytelling”. The prominent genre located closest to the former is journalism. Here, as it was suggested in the third framework, authority is asserted based on the claim of accurately capturing political life by drawing upon truthful and objective information from a detached and neutral perspective. In this way “news” engenders a powerful form of “public knowledge” claiming to present the political world as it “actually is” rendering a “public construction of an expectation of a common shared world … (and) experience” (Schudson 1978, 2009 5, 2011). This manner of influence may at first be more subtle than the mechanisms specified by the other frameworks. Although it claims to chronicle social life in an undistorted manner cultural structures pervading journalism construct and interpretively represent, not just report, political action. Journalism creates relatively stable cultural conventions drawn upon by actors, and folded in the discussions transpiring throughout the political public sphere. Through the narratives created by journalism actors create the social world. In doing so influence is exerted on social action and structure.[4]
Cultural sociology has also been at the forefront of developing new insight regarding the other end of mass media’s other ‘conceptual pole’, entertainment, making it quite germane to political sociology. The re-evaluations of decades of mostly normative and negative research on entertainment has led to scholarship highlighting entertainments’ political significance and influence upon institutions inside and outside of the civil sphere. Like journalism entertainment creates stock representations of collective actors, institutions, and practices. However important difference should be noted. Entertainment is not constrained by the same professional norms and values applied to journalism. The symbolic forms generated by entertainment create constellations of meaning with considerably more latitude compared to its journalistic counterpart. Unencumber by a need to claim objectivity, realism, or detachment for its legitimacy entertainment provides a sustained “flow of representations about ongoing social events and actors … (engendering) a much greater cathartic impact on the self-understandings of civil society” vis-à-vis journalism (Alexander 2006 74). In adopting real world concerns entertainment like film, novels, television, radio programs, and performing arts create symbolic structures integral to the political public sphere. Ongoing story arcs highlight engaging dramatic elements, develop multidimensional characters, and exercise artistic license around the same topical matter found in journalism. This allows entertainment to illuminate publicly relevant issues in novel ways (Alexander 2006; Alexander and Jacobs 1998; Jacobs 2003b, 2005, 2007, 2011; Warner 2005).[5]
There are other dimensions to the relationship between journalism and entertainment that are relevant to the research questions presented here. By dramatizing political life entertainment often attracts the attention of journalism, and how journalism addresses entertainment (and political entertainment more specifically) bears significant consequence for the political public sphere. More than focusing on similar content entertainment becomes the subject of news reports and opinion pieces. As entertainment becomes the object of serious reflection and critique throughout the journalistic field it increasingly becomes connected to other discussion transpiring throughout the political public sphere. Journalism moves beyond an exclusive evaluation of entertainment for its quality as entertainment and folds it into broader discussion and debates about common political concerns.
The cultural dynamic existing between journalism and entertainment described above sheds additional light on the ability of the latter to exercise political influence. The introduction of entertainment to the political public sphere via journalism exposes it to “communities of critics and other expert interpreters, whose interpretations and evaluations are published in high-profile media that shape the public understanding and reception” of politics (Jacobs and Wild 2013 74). Entwined in the political commentary and critique organized through journalism entertainment acquires public relevance adding to the “communicative infrastructure” of the political public sphere (Jacobs 2003, 2011 323; Jacobs and Townsley 2011).[6]
Entertainment programs have access to and impact the official spaces of political discussion. However, the ability to control how they are discussed, and hence public perceptions of their meaning in the political public sphere, is not completely within their control. To put this another way, research suggests that news reports and commentary
about entertainment plays a significant role in shaping the very public understandings entertainment carries, and influences its political import. For instance, recent studies by cultural sociologists of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have made this point. Moving beyond an analysis of show content or influence on their respective audiences they have focused on how these programs have been folded in spaces of serious discussion in the political public sphere. The research has identified patterned narrative structures indicating a type of public commentary about the programs, and raises new and exciting questions concerning the implications for the political influence they exert. The authors find that narratives about these programs tend to reinforce prevailing cultural distinctions within the media field, namely that journalism and entertainment are indeed distinct and should remain so. While the programs are often praised for satirical reflections on contemporary politics and journalism they are still treated as a secondary player in the political public sphere. This in and of itself is significant. Entertainment enters the world of political discussion and debate, but how it comes to be made publicly meaningful is contingent upon journalism (Jacobs and Wild 2013).
Cultural Sociology has much to offer for the study of entertainment, journalism, and the political public sphere where intersubjective patterned systems of meaning are at the center of analysis. A modest contribution is proposed here. In the following chapter a methodological program attentive to requirements of the “strong” program of Cultural Sociology will be developed, and applied to studying the political influence of Rush Limbaugh. By applying insights from this last framework described in this chapter to studying the dynamics of political influence associated with talk show hosts, more data will be generated to further evaluate the analytical purchase of Cultural Sociology’s models of the Civil Sphere. In addition alternative explanations could be produced, and added to the extant literature focused on explaining Limbaugh’s political influence. Further research can help increase the precision with which cultural sociology can illuminate the influences of political entertainment, and in turn more specifically connect them to political actions reverberating throughout civil society and the state.
[1] The cultural structures comprising the
contested symbolic systems will be described in more detail in the next
chapter.
[2] Mass media does not HAVE to exclude platforms
or technologies mediating interpersonal communication. For instance smart
phones can be considered a technological platform for direct interpersonal or
mass mediated communication.
[3] The aims of the research where the concept of
“social interface” was drawn from was first developed and deployed in
sociological and anthropological studies of rural development. See Arce,
Alberto and Long (2000); Long (1984, 1989). Here the concept is being expanded
beyond its original usage. It shares a resonance with Castells ideas about
nodes in a ‘network society’. See Castells (2000, 2008, 2011)
[4] More will be presented regarding the
‘mechanism’ by which this works in the following chapter.
[5] One of the more useful concepts drawn from this
literature is the ‘counter-factual’ public sphere. This refers to entertainment
focusing on ‘serious’ matters taken up in other spaces of the political public
sphere. It creates fictional worlds
where representations of reality draw upon the imaginative and figurative
producing a broad range of rich signifiers that are fruitful at describing
public life as well as providing tools to use in public encounters (See Jacobs
2003b, 2007). Copious examples exist. For example, Alexander devotes
considerable attention to the way American novelists, film producers, actors
and others in the field of cultural production were able to accomplish a task
of social integration. They were effective at building a Jewish identity by
developing social dramas inserted into American popular culture that aligned
qualities of the religion with qualities of the ‘primordial’ American group.
Professing a sacred affinity with the broader nation, and engendering
iconographic characters into public life contributed to the incorporation of
Jews into the American mainstream (Alexander 2003, 2006).
In another example cable
movie channel HBO has made counter-factual public spheres a staple of its
programing. The Newsroom and Veep are two recent examples of
fictional renditions of American mass media and national politics while
original movies like Too Big to Fail,
Recount, and Game Change create highly dramatized accounts of major political
and economic events from recent US history. Oliver Stone often directs films
with plot lines set in tumultuous periods in American politics such as W., Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, and Nixon. Movie streaming service and internet entertainment network
Netflix adopted the BBC drama House of
Cards for an American audience to critical acclaim. Comedy programs like South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the Boondocks frequently take pressing political issues as subject
matter as well. In turn, many of these spaces make their way into the
purportedly ‘more serious’ discussions of journalism.
[6] An important part of this process is the
formation of an ‘aesthetic’ public sphere. This describes the social action
whereby journalism draws upon entertainment as subject matter applying judgment
and critique. For example, when entertainment artifacts are featured in an
‘arts’ section of a newspaper or during an ‘entertainment’ segment of a news
broadcast stories and columns ruminate upon its cultural and public
significance (Jacobs and Townsley 2011; Jacobs and Wild 2013).
[1] Concurrent changes in methodology emphasized the textual
properties of social life, and suggested that this type of data is amendable to
various hermeneutical qualities emphasizing the autonomous structuring power of
culture. The development of this type of “structural hermeneutics” made systems
of meaning central to analysis (Alexander, Jacobs, and Smith 2012). This will
be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter.