Capitol riots and the mythic memory of 1776

FeaturedCapitol riots and the mythic memory of 1776

Interviewer: Ma’am, what happened to you?

Rioter from Knoxville: I got maced [wipes away tears, breathlessly]

Interviewer: You got maced. And what happened? You were trying to go inside the Capitol?

Rioter from Knoxville: [Indignantly] Yeah! I made it like a foot inside and they pushed me out and the maced me!

Interviewer: What is your name and where are you from?

Rioter from Knoxville: My name is Elizabeth; I’m from Knoxville, Tennessee!

Interviewer: And why did you want to go in?

Rioter from Knoxville: We’re storming the Capitol! It’s a revolution!

_______________

Attendees of Trump’s rally-turned-riot stormed the Capitol at the direction of the president. They attempted to stop Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win and the peaceful transition of power that has defined American government for centuries. But many rioters seemed unprepared considering the scale of their ambitions. The apparent surprise of the rioter from Knoxville at law enforcement’s response suggests many involved were animated by visions of revolution different from that of their flak-jacketed comrades. For rioters like Elizabeth, January 6th was a genteel, candy-coated revolution, closer to carnival than coup. She and others were Revolution Tourists.

To be sure, many Capitol rioters were prepared for violence. Video footage shows the Capitol steps packed with men “kitted up” in tactical gear. They came in flak jackets, clutched zip-tie hand restraints and assault fashion reminiscent of Call of Duty. White men between 18 and 50 can be seen kicking doors down, busting windows and beating a fallen Capitol police officer because they believe conspiracies of election fraud promoted by Republican political leaders and far-right media.

CBS live coverage of rioters in street clothes carrying handbags and wearing designer sunglasses.

Others storming the building, by contrast, seemed more prepared for festivities than ferocity. Live scenes at the Capitol had a jamboree atmosphere of Revolution Tourism. Amused and casually dressed middle-aged men took selfies with fellow rioters and Capitol officers. In plumes of tear gas, a well-dressed woman carefully lifts her stylish purse through a shattered window frame. A group of twenty-somethings scurried up and down climbing ropes like outdoor enthusiasts on a sporty weekend getaway. Once inside the building, many who had forcibly entered the broken doors of the building then formed orderly lines as they meandered through Statuary Hall within the velvet roped walkway.

CNN’s live coverage showed rioters strangely respectful of the velvet tourist rope after the chaos of breaking and entering the Capitol moments earlier.

These Tourist Revolutionaries were not dressed for violent insurrection. Nor were they happy patriots there to admire institutions of democracy, as Republican apologists have suggested. They were dressed for a Trump rally, and it is not clear that these festival-goers fully understood the gravity of their choices on that day. This does not make them less culpable. It does, however, make their actions more frightening. Elizabeth from Knoxville’s view of revolution speaks to the privilege and ignorance underlying the danger of a shallow and mythical version of the American Revolution and American politics in general.

Elizabeth became a meme after complaining to a reporter that she was maced when trying to break into the Capitol complex. The preposterousness of a “revolutionary” expressing indignation after being repulsed triggered the usual mockery online. Georgia Aspinall at Grazia has cautioned against such mockery. “The sheer delusion of this woman, so bold in her conviction that this was necessary, so confused and upset that police stopped her from attacking the US democracy . . . is terrifying.”

Aspinall is right. Beneath the easily mocked sense of entitlement is a deeply confused sense of American history and politics. Yes, the premise of election fraud that animated these crowds in the first place was a lie. The more pressing issue Aspinall sees is how Elizabeth from Knoxville was unable to recognize the difference between democratic and anti-democratic political action.

Sharpwriter, Seal Team 1776 from “Deviant Art”

What should we make of the throngs who were not participating in a sort of serious-minded coup attempt like their flak-jacketed comrades? The insurrectionists in piano scarves and colorful tailgate facepaint suggest that these tourist revolutionaries saw the trip to DC (from New Jersey, Knoxville, Arkansas) as a symbolic performance of American independence and a rejection of elites cartoonishly painted for them by reckless political rhetoric and a post-Truth media ecosystem that greedily amplifies that which inflames.

The misunderstanding of American history that animated rioters is at the root of the conflict. Tourist Revolutionaries, energized by the symbolism of “1776,” confuse the tyranny of the monarch King George with the compromises of democracy and shared self-governance with fellow Americans. The carnival sense of patriotic revolt allowed rioters to happily pose for photos in the act of theft without a sense of the criminality of stealing. The carnival version of 1776 paints revolution as revelry and confuses protest with sedition.

If Elizabeth from Knoxville’s shock is genuine, it suggests that many of the rioters cannot understand that they have broken laws. In their minds, they should have the privilege to trespass because the Capitol is public property, their property. Elizabeth may have wondered how patriots could be on the wrong side of the law.

Rioters like Elizabeth have a mythical and sanitized understanding of American history, one that has lost the gritty and horrifying elements of revolution. The amputated limbs. The slumped bodies after British soldiers fired into an angry Boston crowd. The newspaper editors who were jailed for insulting colonial governors. The tyranny of princely rule without representation. These dirty and gangrenous parts of the American Revolution are missing from Elizabeth’s version of American history. As a tourist, Elizabeth understood threatening lawmakers as an extension of patriotic citizenship.

Tourist Revolutionaries on display during the Trump riot were engaging in a symbolic act that reenacts a mythical history of the country. Like visitors to a Renaissance fair or audiences at Medieval Times Dinner Theater, they did not expect authorities to respond to illegal occupation of Federal buildings with force. Her indignation speaks volumes about how symbols of political rhetoric can obscure the very real danger of “doing revolution.” Being met with force is surprising to those participating in Tourism Revolution. They complain of injury as if slapped by Goofy at Disneyland.

Capitol rioter and self-described "QAnon Shaman," Jake Angeli, costumed in symbolic paint and dress.
Capitol rioter and self-described “QAnon Shaman,” Jake Angeli, costumed in symbolic paint and dress.

This was a symbolic act for a substantial number of Trump supporters who were misled by President Trump to believe they were fighting for the preservation of America rather than the subversion of electoral democracy to prop up the president’s personal ambitions.

Tourist Revolution performs a celebratory but incomplete understanding of American history, one all Americans share at Fourth of July parties and fireworks displays standing in for the red glare of actual warfare. The symbolic rhetoric that brought Elizabeth and others to the nation’s capital became literal, but it is not clear that many rioters understood the difference. This should come as no surprise in a political-media system unable to sort myth and symbol from reality for citizens. As these symbols slip from protest speech to seditious action, we can see that our fractured media is not just a quirk of social media. It is a threat to democratic governance more menacing than any pitchfork or pipebomb.

An American politics of symbols, or the triumph of “symbolitics”

FeaturedAn American politics of symbols, or the triumph of “symbolitics”
Mario Tama, Getty Images

“Climate skepticism has become a tenet of populism — a revolt against elitist scientists and liberal politicians seeking excuses for social and economic control. The denial of climate change has become a cultural signifier, the policy equivalent of a gun rack in a truck.”

-Washington Post opinion columnist

“When [Trump] makes claims . . . the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

–The Atlantic, September, 2016

“I think a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ . . . What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy.”

-Paypal co-founder and Trump supporter, Peter Thiel

Political polarization has shifted how Americans self-identify, and much of this recent transformation stems from symbolic forms of civic engagement. The political animosity that has a stranglehold on politics – harbingers of civil war for a worried few – suggests Americans are increasingly reliant on politics of symbols to frame our personal identities and interpret power in 21st century American life.

This is frustrating for journalists who wring their hands over “fact-free” discourse or new media misinformation. And it’s understandable given journalism is ostensibly a fact-based profession. But the mainstream press may have a problem of being naively literal in an increasingly symbolic political world.

Much of the journalistic marveling, some quite condescending, is in response to Trump’s voter base. To understand the disconnect between professional journalists and Trump’s base, we should recognize how a marriage of entertainment and political culture fueled his political rise. Television fandoms from the entertainment culture -The Apprentice, World Wrestling Entertainment- took the small step into the public sphere. As Trump’s familiar face from entertainment media moved into political media, the 2016 campaign drew on that television audience.

But it did more than draw voters. It also imported the logics of reality TV. Ratings took on heightened importance. Crowd size became worthy of debate. The political theater took on the carnival atmosphere of a wrestling arena in which voters could organize around the symbols of heroism and villainy. Entertainment culture colonized the political realm and imported the energy and emotion of reality TV.

Part of the entertainment-politics melding is a fuller shift of political reasoning from a messy world of policy details to a clean and easily understood world of symbolic narratives in which moral assertion displaces analytic nuance. The preference for the digestible world of symbols over factual debate precedes Trump but reached new proportions with his presidency and will likely continue beyond it.

It might be wise to more fully recognize how American politics has become a game of cultural signifiers. And yet, elite newsrooms are unable to recognize the symbolic language of American citizenry. For many, American politics is a game of bipolar brinkmanship dealing in mythic symbols that funnel debate into an either/or dynamic of the two-party system. 

We can hear it in casual conversations among the politically like-minded: “I could never date a Republican.” Or in how we regard politically mixed marriage: “I wonder what it is like at THAT dinner table!” In modern America, fathers are more likely to object to daughters bringing home the political opposition than a love interest of a different race. As Iyengar and Westwood put it, “party cues exert powerful effects on nonpolitical judgments and behaviors.” A politics-first identity has subsumed other social roles, and we can see it in reports of estranged family members and politically severed friendships.

Viewing political orientation as a deal-breaker in our romantic lives and wondering at “political miscegenation” underscore how partisan identities have taken a more central role in our broader social lives. Though the democratic ideal says we “should” vote according to tangible identities of self-interest (a small business owner or cancer survivor or blue-collar worker) we increasingly rely on artificially binary identities crafted by a symbol systems of commercial media and political elites. 

Today, we are less likely to participate in politics as ourselves. Instead, we participate as “real Republicans” or “true progressives.” We act as representatives of packaged ideologies rather than individuals directly voting for a better life through self-governance. I suspect the “symbolification” of political culture is both a symptom and a cause in this process.

Reporting QAnon: a symbolic politics

Q symbol with glitch effect illustration.

What are the consequences when American politics, already prone to partisan theater, embraces an affective world of symbolism? To what degree do polarized cultural identities in the political realm necessitate the conversion of policy battles into symbols or battles over mere symbols?

These are ponderous questions, but I can map out some potential fallout.

First, the increasing power of symbolic communication in high politics has consequences for traditional understandings of democratic politics that are built into professional news frames.  

Symbolification distances public debate from the actual machinery of government. Instead of addressing the confusing details of healthcare or the tax system, symbols stand in with broad caricatures of the issue and the political agents that represent them. Symbolic politics offers a cast of evil-doers and heroic figures fighting for politically vague but symbolically meaningful goals. 

The degree to which policy debates devolve into symbolic representation is a fair approximation of the degree to which citizens directly control their government. A shallow symbolic system can replace details of party platforms or voting records. As a result, citizen judgement is one step removed.

Second, importing the symbols of entertainment culture may exacerbate partisan divisions. As differing symbolic systems ensconce and separate American subcultures, unifying themes of nationality weaken. Participation in politics through symbolic representations allows the public to address very different worlds with little hope of solving the very real social problems facing the nation. A common creed that has historically shored up American identity fragments along the fault lines of confirmation biases. The symbolic center cannot hold.

Finally, the reliance on symbols to navigate American politics plays into the vagaries and smoky mysticism of conspiracy mongers. Why would an American raise doubts about the American moon landing? Taken literally, the claim is absurd. Taken symbolically, it captures a broad suspicion that government is deceitful and so power-hungry that it would orchestrate a grand public deception to achieve “its” goals. The specific theory that the moon landing was faked does not itself need to be true as a symbolic representation of a calloused, elite government manipulating the public. The conspiracy is “true” even if Lance and Buzz actually took that one small step.

This is why literary semiotics may be a better tool for understanding American politics than political science or a burst of polls calculated, correlated, crunched and recrunched. The role of symbols in movements inspired by QAnon illustrates how current tools of of professional journalism produce blindspots in political analysis.

QAnon: reading conspiracies as semiotic politics

“. . . conspiracy theory [is[ an entertaining narrative form, a populist expression of a democratic culture, that circulates deep skepticism about the truth of the current political order throughout contemporary culture.” (Fenster 1999, pg. xiii).

Politics is rather boring in the details. That’s why C-Span is not a ratings hit. Watching senators argue policy in front of an empty chamber is mind-numbing and, frankly, uninformative for anyone but DC insiders or beat reporters. 

By contrast, online corners of conspiratorial thought like QAnon give gripping narrative structure to the sense of powerlessness in modern America. From the electoral college to tax policy, American democracy has features that are glaringly elite. QAnon merely gives a narrative to a fundamental truth felt by many Americans: powerlessness.

What is QAnon? The group is known for its wildest assertion that a cabal of Satan-worshipping elites control key government and media operations. This secret organization is engaged in child sex crimes at a massive scale. In some versions, these elites consume children’s blood to extend life or otherwise sustain themselves.

QAnon researchers have found no coherent, single narrative that defines the movement. Under the umbrella of QAnon, there are factions who have “different ideas about who the cabal is and what their ultimate goals are . . . but they are united in the belief that everything is a lie and the order needs to be destroyed.” It is more a patchwork of unorthodox explanations of power in America.

Taken literally, the conspiracy movement fails tests of evidence required by professional journalists as well as classrooms and the courts. If we de-emphasize the narrative specifics and read these beliefs as metaphor (don’t take it literally but take it seriously), the basic structure of the theory is true. As metaphor, the narrative is a archetypal story of the powerful preying on the weak. 

In fact, wealth gaps and power divisions do define modern America. Two-thirds of U.S. senators’ net worth exceeds $1 million. As Pew researchers note, income growth in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households and the middle class has shrunk. Nearly three-quarters of all employees live paycheck-to-paycheck in 2020. The popular vote often fails to elect presidents, defying the public will for arcane legalistic reasons. Given these conditions, the myth created by “Q” can make sense emotionally even if it fails intellectually.

We can understand the more outrageous conspiracy theories as a consequence of America’s crippled ability to recognize class conflict. If a group of people don’t have a language of class-based oppression -e.g. “haves and have nots”- they turn to alternative explanations for the inequality they feel. Pedophilia stands in as a morally charged symbol for victimization. 

On the other side of this growing economic disparity, the investor class buys and sells holdings according to the logic of financial capital. If their children don’t earn admission to prestigious schools, the elite bribe their way into East and West coast schools. 

This is why QAnon functions a redemption narrative comparable to Christian religious movements. It involves faith in something deeper than facts show us and belief without clear evidence. However far-fetched, conspiracy paints a symbolic picture that explains the sense of powerlessness felt by many.

At once, “Q” offers a way to resist that oppressive force. It provides comfort by painting a world of stark good and evil in which clear heroes work to save the faithful and punish the villainous. Adherents decode and scrutinize the meaning of Q’s pronouncements like ecclesiastical priests engaged in Biblical hermeneutics. Retweeting Q or interpreting Q’s “drops” becomes an act of defiance by speaking truth to nefarious but poorly understood power in America. The congregants evangelistically hope to reveal the truth to nonbelievers and instigate a “great awakening.” 

A symbolic analysis of culture might produce more useful maps for navigating this strain of American politics, and it certainly reveals more than the quantitative approach taken by poll-obsessed news networks that treat elections like horse-races. As symbolism displaces more direct citizen engagement with matters of government, the assumptions of political journalism become less reflective of actual political processes and opinion formation in American life. 

The growing wedge between mainstream news and parts of the American public stems from these divergent epistemologies. Traditional journalism functions as a gatekeeper, filtering the non-factual out of public discourse. The growing part of the American public who engage with politics though symbolic narratives see this realist epistemology as censorship and oppression. News perpetuates a fiction that numbers are an accurate representation of reality. Journalists, true to their professional training, dismiss counterfactual political thoughts with a myopic literalism.

But the political class only shoots itself in the foot when it dismisses symbolic discourse. New York Times columnist, David Brooks, argues that “personal contact” is the way to “[reduce] the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it.” Journalists may not be able to personally reach out to the alienated, but newsrooms can certainly pay greater attention to the symbolic dimensions of political culture and better understand the reality buried in the myths that shape the “paranoid style” of American politics. 

Symbols have and will always play a role in political movements. Just look at the flags arrayed during the Capitol riots. It is uncertain, however, if 21st century journalism can develop analysis that both maintains fact-based discourse and productively accounts for the emerging centrality of symbols in political life. But a wholesale shift to symbolic public discourse threatens to unmoor democratic participation from meaningful self-governance.

From Iraq to America, a refugee’s childhood in post-Saddam Iraq

FeaturedFrom Iraq to America, a refugee’s childhood in post-Saddam Iraq

Here is Ian’s audio interview with Ali, an Iraqi refugee attending college in Midwestern America.

Ian spoke with Ali to better understand the experience of those living in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s removal from power in 2003. The political instability and partisan media that followed had a profound impact on Iraqi society, triggering mass migrations from conflict zones. Ali’s family was one of thousands displaced by the chaos in the wake of US intervention.

Because his father assisted US authorities after the war, Ali’s family fled sectarian violence to Syria and, eventually, the American Midwest. Ali’s early life offers a more intimate view of the conflict than the occupation captured by US news. His childhood, marked by nightly gunfire, lawlessness and migration, highlights the human costs of American wars.

From Iraq to America

Iraq population flight

Zero-rating and Network Favoritism: the beginning of the end of Network Neutrality

FeaturedZero-rating and Network Favoritism: the beginning of the end of Network Neutrality

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The relationship between content providers like Disney and ISPs like Verizon will change significantly in a post-Network Neutral world. But will there be more competition?

Network Neutrality and the problem of zero-rating

Anyone note the explosion of advertising for free access to content like Spotify or Netflix? This T-Mobile ad samples TV so much it could be mistaken for a Netflix promotion. But if we look past the smiling shots of our favorite TV characters high-fiving, we see the first signs of what life on the web will be like after Network Neutrality.

It is no coincidence we see these offers in the wake of weakened Network Neutrality principles. This practice, “zero-rating,” is a clear example of what NN advocates have feared. Zero rating is the practice of creating partnerships with content providers like Netflix and making access to content from certain providers cheaper. Those who control the network get to play favorites in choosing the content flowing through their “pipes.” In short, not everyone trying to reach users/customers is treated equally.

How is this anti-competitive? Imagine we want to launch a music service to compete with Spotify. We have a good tech team that worked hard developing a friendlier user interface and faster file access for the consumer. Spotify’s deal with T-Mobile means our start-up music service, regardless of our app’s superiority, will likely fail. Why? Incumbent market advantages:

  1. Access to customers. Spotify will have a guaranteed user base in T-Moblie’s subscribers. Big user bases attract revenue from venture capital and new media investors of the Silicon Valley sort.
  2. Advertiser appeal. A high number of users (high traffic) will mean increased interest from advertisers, another revenue stream.
  3. Data sales. High traffic also provides user data. User data is valuable to marketing firms and several new industries that lurk in the shadowy world of data brokers (one broker offering a “Rape Sufferers List” for targeted marketing).

All of these factors add up to tall barriers to entry for competitors. By preferring Spotify’s content over others, network owners will effectively pick and choose winners while stifling innovative startups. And what is the likelihood that T-Mobile will allow a Spotify competitor to use the T-Mobile network?

This glimpse of a post-Network Neutral internet shows how anti-competitive the legal environment can become. It is a sharp contrast with the early (network-neutral) internet that allowed a young Netflix to challenge cable providers. Even seemingly innocuous Netflix package deals could be harbingers of a significantly less competitive industry in which consumers and startups ultimately lose.

download

Despite the upbeat Netflix vignettes, these growing and merging media companies are not friendly giants. Zero-rating is a first stage of dramatic changes in store for a post-NN world. Network Favoritism of this sort dampens the industry’s ability to produce innovations and removes incentives to improve customer services. Without Network Neutrality, we risk more concentration in ownership and the development of distribution-content trusts. These trusts are more likely to stifle innovation.

Internet service providers like Comcast argue they would suffer unfair market disadvantages, but Comcast’s position on NN is contorted. As T.C. Sottok noted in The Verge, Comcast’s incoherent NN policy goes something like: “We respect and abide by NN principles and that is why we want them removed.” It begs the simple question: If the company appreciates NN, why petition to change FCC rules?

Public relations speak has made Comcast’s position nonsense, but policymakers have maps for navigating these waters. Nineteenth century Americans fought the Standard Oil monopoly because trusts and monopoly violated American ideas of capitalism. Concentration led to market dysfunction and harmed the economy at large. Early in the 20th century, AT&T had bought up most of the nation’s phone networks but accepted substantial government regulation in exchange for becoming the nation’s sole telephone company. AT&T owned all the market and Americans had public interest (9-1-1, fair rates, equal access) hardwired into US telecommunications system.

Standard Oil’s J D Rockefeller was a strict, church-going man. Reporters of the era noted that he taught Bible school on Sundays, but, by Monday, he was as ruthless a business mogul as the Gilded Age could produce. Disney may have the veneer of progressive ice princesses and dancing tea sets, but the media business is, well, business.

Continue reading “Zero-rating and Network Favoritism: the beginning of the end of Network Neutrality” →

Help them off the cliff: how modern Russian propaganda helps Americans hate Americans

FeaturedHelp them off the cliff: how modern Russian propaganda helps Americans hate Americans

Russian interference in the 2016 US election took many forms. Twitter bots, paid trolling, memes, and Facebook ad campaigns put politically charged messages in front of Americans, enflaming preexisting social divisions in the US. This paper seeks to place RT in a larger complex of the fragmentation of the American public, the role of “disruptive media” strategies and, finally, the geopolitics of US-Russian relations. By tracing the intellectual work of Kremlin political philosopher, Aleksandr Dugin, we get a clearer picture of Russian media campaigns that dominate the headlines.

There is mounting evidence that Russian efforts consciously sought to play on preexisting tensions in American civic life. Race, class, gender and sexuality, all subjects of political strife in a hyperpartisan American political system, became fodder for Russian meme-factories and a small army of covert online commenters. RT’s disruptive role also reflects the Anti-Liberalism of Dugin in his work on geopolitics and so-called Fourth Political Theory. This paper argues that RT is part of a larger strategy we call “disrupt media” and reflects the under-explored teachings of Russian political philosopher, Aleksandr Dugin.

RT criticizes NYT
RT “disruptive” role in American civic life involves casting doubt on key American institutions, including American news media.

Disrupt media refers to persuasive campaigns that play upon growing American distrust of US news as an institution of political and social life. But the strategy is not unique to Russian disinformation. For years, domestic news operations -Fox News and Brietbart- have played on the distrust of “mainstream” journalism to draw and retain viewership by cultivating distrust in American media. This paper explores how RT combines a disrupt strategy with the geopolitical thinking of “Duginism” which suggests “introduc[ing] geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts” (Dugin, 2015, p. 367).

RT propaganda blacktivistSharable partisan content, regardless of its support for right or left, Democrat or Republican, left vs. far left, is best understood as an outgrowth of the information bubbles and fragmentation of the American electorate. Disrupt media, in Dugin’s model, fortifies group identity. In line with the Council of Europe’s 2017 report, we reframe this strategy of “information pollution” as a question of culture and ritual rather than simple information transmission, recognizing that “communication plays a fundamental role in representing shared beliefs” (7). RT’s campaign found success by taking advantage of the commercial foundations of the US (new) media system and forms of redistribution enabled by user sharing functions of new media platforms.

Cal’s Media History journals: a guide

An historiography assignment asks for comparisons of historical arguments on a given subject. Focus your search on academic/scholarly articles rather than journalism or other popular press sources. Make sure you are searching scholarly databases. That will make finding material to compare easier and the sources more authoritative.

Step 1. Look at history-focused articles in the academic press in Cal’s university library. Log in and narrow your search to academic journals and peer-reviewed on the left hand side of the library menu. You are looking for journals with writers who debate media history subjects. (FYI: you might need to use the library proxy VPN if off campus). You might also use Google Scholar to explore potential articles for comparison using these steps.

Step 2. Open the journal and search some aspect of media history you would like to explore. For example, you might be interested in the history of women and media. So, one would search within the journal for anything that mentions these subjects. Articles will always be historical in these journals, so I find this article:

Television—the Housewife’s Choice? The 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive, Reluctance and Revision by Helen Wood. (Berkeley log in)

A Google Scholar search for keywords “Cold War Film Propaganda” shows a number of potentially comparable research articles. You would likely need to use your library database (or an on campus computer) to get access.

Step 3. Next, I would look at the abstract. That is the summary at the beginning. If I like it, I put it aside for later reference. Before reading the full article, I would examine the abstracts of other articles addressing the same subject and time period (authors writing about women and media in the 1940s or WWII film propaganda). Find two that seem to speak to one another in topic. The two authors may make similar or contrasting central arguments, but your task is to examine how they differ in argument, historiographical perspective, methods or archives used, etc. In the process, summarize the authors’ arguments, referencing the primary sources and methods where relevant.

That should be a good primer to point you in the right direction to do some basic historiography.

K Mart Security

“Lululemon stands by decision to fire employees who intervened in robbery”

“. . . Cellphone footage from the store shows two men wearing hoodies and face masks rush into the store and grab armloads of merchandise from areas closest to the entrance of the store and then rush out. One female employee is seen near the entrance of the store close to where the men are heard yelling ‘get out’ repeatedly.”

-CNN, 2023

*****

James pulled up in an 87′ Dodge Aries K Sedan. It was a blocky 4-door with some of the paint fading from the roof as if the highway speeds were stripping away the original bland blue. James said he was heading to Greenton, a nearby town about 10 miles away that had the “super” stores. These gigantic buildings, Walmarts, K-Marts, Staples were the first structures that appeared on the horizon as you entered Greenton coming from Ashmore.

The people of both of these small farming towns grumbled about the big stores over weak cups of coffee at dirty-spoon diners:

“Suzie’s Sporting Goods had to shut down when K-Mart set up the store in Greenton.”

“Yep.” another man agreed. “The entire downtown is a graveyard. They are shuttering half the stores in town. Gerry’s gonna lose his family’s TV store. I am glad his father isn’t around to see it.”

Aaron didn’t care much for Susie or Gerry, but he, too, felt these giant companies were the enemy of the good. Faceless and cold like the empty space in the excessively tall buildings. The exposed metal rafters and corrugated ceiling way up above the heads of the shoppers always struck him as industrial, like walking into a warehouse rather than a store.

Residents of Ashmore complained, but they all shopped at the Greenton megastores. Couldn’t afford not to.

Aaron was painting his father’s house when James pulled up in the aging Chrysler. James turned off the engine and yelled to Aaron through the rolled-down driver’s side window.

“How about Greenton today?”

James was tall and lanky with a bowl-cut of black hair and a rebellious attitude that bordered on a personality disorder. That is why Aaron liked him. Aaron appreciated a healthy disrespect for authority, especially the kind of ignorant authority teenage kids had to wade through in small Iowa towns. It was as thick and oppressive as the early August humidity.

James’s parents were gone for the week and left him with the car to get into town from their country house. Aaron’s parents were divorced, and his dad worked long hours. Aaron could rely on him being gone for about 18 hours a day.

“Yes and yes!” Aaron dropped the paintbrush unceremoniously, energized by the prospect of ditching chores for an adventure. “We need some shit for the fort out at MCA’s place. Something to cut the ground cover at the main campsite. Nettles are too thick for the shears. They have stuff like that there, right?”

“They got everything at the Super.”

“Fuck yeah, they do. They got donuts, man. An entire wall of donuts. I got one last time I was there. Grabbed it from that wall with the little plastic doors. I just ate it while I walked around the store. No one noticed, dude. Some old woman looked at me weird, but no employees were paying attention. By the time I was walking out the door, I had eaten one Boston Cream and two regular creams. Those fucks can’t keep track of us. This is gonna be sweet.”

“Good for us.”

Aaron jumped into the passenger seat, leaving his father’s garage wall half-painted and the can of brown paint open on the ground. He didn’t know when he would see his father next, so it didn’t seem to matter that summer afternoon. He searched a book of compact discs. “The Judge?”

“Sure.” James was a quiet kid. Quiet and angry. The kind of angry that wouldn’t lift a finger to put out a fire if it burned the high school gym or courthouse.

It was a 10-minute drive between Ashmore and Greenton, an uninspired stretch of flat state highway. The passing scenery alternated between rows of tall, late-summer corn and shorter soybean fields. Aaron talked about what they needed for the campsite, prattling on about the fort in the woods they would build. James listened while driving.

Suddenly, Aaron stopped his talk of woodland forts and turned up the car radio. A singer in a strained voice screamed,

“The evidence before the court is

incontrovertible

There is no need for the jury to retire . . .”

Aaron began singing at the top of his lungs with a smile on his face that looked more crazed than happy. The windows were down and wind beat into the car at sixty-five miles an hour.

“In all my years of judging

I have never heard before

Of someone more deserving

Of the full penalty of law.”

James’ head was tilted forward as if leaning into the forward movement of the Chrysler, quiet but intent. On the horizon, a towering K-Mart sign was coming into view.

*****

Something was wrong. Aaron was looking over some CDs in the Super K-Mart music aisle when he got a creepy sense in his spine. Maybe this trip was a mistake.

It was the third. Both James and Aaron had lifted merchandise from the store, exited to the parking lot where James had parked, unloaded the goods into the backseat, and re-entered the K-Mart two times already. The second time, James had slid two machetes up his sleeves and had to walk out the main entrance like some stiff-armed weirdo. No one seemed to notice. A third trip would be no different, they agreed.

But it was different. Aaron was looking down at the music as a ruse. His mind was actually crawling over his fellow shoppers, searching for strange behavior that might indicate security was aware of them. Aaron had half a dozen silk boxers tucked into his Umbro soccer shorts with two Led Zepplin discs threatening to fall to the tiled floor. James was nowhere to be seen. They separated to avoid attracting attention from the security cameras that hung like black orbs from the ceiling. It was time to go. Aaron hoped James was out at the car waiting.

The nearest exit was the garden section. The exit opened into a glass greenhouse that then opened into the parking lot. He glanced furtively behind him. He was about forty feet from the parking lot and freedom. No one seemed to be eyeing him, so he turned to look at some shelves filled with spades and gloves, standing next to a man who looked to be in his late 20s with dark brown, curly mullet and glasses that reminded him of David Koresh or Jeffery Dahmer.

“Hey, man,” Aaron asked in a mildly annoyed but dim-witted way, “do you know where the house paint is? Is it in Gardening?” The man glanced at Aaron and said no dismissively before moving on.

Aaron was relieved. The hostile indifference meant the man was not tailing him. He was just getting jittery. The rumor was that those cameras were just for show. If you felt like you were being watched, you would behave. No need to hire a bunch of hicks to stare at screens all day. Let the illusion keep the thieves in check.

He was only twenty-five feet from the garden center exit into the parking lot. Aaron wanted to see if James was around and did his best to appear like an annoyed customer looking for his family. James was still out of sight. “Maybe he is back at the car,” he said allowed to anyone listening, and turned to the exit. Then he heard it from directly behind him.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE! K-MART SECURITY.”

The exit was eight feet away and, as soon as the first word hit him from behind, Aaron dashed into the parking lot. He felt a hand swipe down his back as if the Superstore guard had reached for his t-shirt collar and missed. As soon as his legs shot him out of the store, the CDs fell to the pavement like rocket boosters falling away from a spaceship during liftoff.

He could hear the mullet-man curse and pick up speed behind him, but Aaron had hit his full stride weaving between parked cars baking in the Iowa summer sun. James’s car was on the other side of the building. Besides, if he ran to the car they would just take the license plate and cops would track them down later. He had to disappear into the wild. He glanced back to see two men. Mullet man and a heavy-set older man trying to keep up.

He glimpsed James, too, who was about half a football field away, unloading whatnot into his car. No one was pursuing him, so Aaron tried not to look at him too much and raise suspicions they were together, but James turned and began running too.

Aaron was easily outpacing the men chasing him , but he was also running without a destination. He slowed to a jog so James could catch up with him, and started to scan the horizon for a place to hide. James caught up and didn’t say a word. James wore flip-flops, slowing his pace.

Straight ahead, the parking lot ended in a ditch that dipped then rose to the highway, and sparse but high-speed cars whipped by. On the other side of the five-lane highway was Blas-Knox, a dying factory with a largely empty parking lot. If he could get behind the building, he could break the line of vision the two men had on them and change direction, even sprinting for the cornfields beyond the factory.

He looked back to see the two men gaining on him a bit. They yelled, “Stay there, you little sonofabitch!”

Aaron had heard this tone before. Every bully in high school. Every tough guy starts a fight because someone looked at their girlfriend too long. He could hear the violence. Adrenaline hit his bloodstream and he smiled just before running full speed. A semi-truck horn blared at him before speeding by. A grassy patch separated the lanes of traffic and dipped again into a road drainage ditch. Aaron’s legs faltered a bit as he sped down and up into the next phalanx of cars heading from Ashmore into Greenton. More horns and some people yelling out their windows at him, but he made it to the other side, sliding into the ditch that fronted the Blas-Knox building. Laying low, he peeked back to see the two men chasing him. Mullet man was pointing through the traffic in his general direction as the older man caught up to him and bent over in labored breathing. James laid low beside him.

“Well, what now?”

“Let’s lose them behind the Blas-Knox building then b-line it for the old country road. Hide in the corn.”

Aaron stood up and booked to the rear of the factory building. James and Aaron both discarded the contraband. Aaron threw the silk boxers under a parked car. One CD hadn’t fallen out, and he pulled it from his waistband and tossed it on the roof of the factory.

They continued to run toward the old country road, listening to curses and threats coming from behind them. Security had gained on them a bit, and James, a heavy smoker, was audibly wheezing and now struggling to keep up. His sandals were nearly slipping off his feet.

“I can’t keep going.”

“Why the fuck are you wearing those. Fuck fuck fuck!”

“Why are you getting caught, dick?”

“Ok. Let me think.” Aaron pointed to a range of uncut prairie grass. It was three feet tall and thick. The factory owners no longer tended the property. “Let’s take cover in the field. They won’t be able to see us, so stay down.”

Aaron felt supercharged and could have run the ten miles back to Ashmore, but he did not want to abandon James. The two separated a distance and crouched into the swaying, yellow grass. In minutes, the security detail made it behind the factory and began yelling threats into the field.

“We know you are out here, you little fuckers.”

The older man joined in. “We are going to get the dogs. They will take care of you!”

Aaron lay still as a field mouse. He wanted to shift his weight but feared calling attention to his position by making the grasses shift.

“You are in for an ass- an ass-whooping. Ass whoopin.” The older man was still catching his breath.

There were three now. One looked like a customer who just wanted to join the search to get his knuckles into some lawless punks. He seemed to be friends with Mullet man.

“I’ll just pull the Ford around. We can go mudding back here and find the bodies afterward.” His tone was almost jovial.

“Aha! C’mere you little shit. Now you done it!”

Aaron raised his head slightly to see one of the men jerk James up from the grass and wrestle his arms behind him as if planning to cuff him. Aaron sunk back down as another man approached his position – the older man. Aaron closed his eyes and prayed for invisibility. He imagined himself so motionless that he became the prairie grass. When he opened them, the old man, four steps away was looking directly into his eyes. Then he wasn’t. The man’s gaze just drifted over him as he continued the search, pushing the weeds aside.

The two others had James and called to the old man who rejoined them. Mullet man yelled out to Aaron. We will find you. Be back with the truck and the cops. You don’t know what an ass-whooping is, boy!”

Aaron waited 10 minutes for them to clear out and then ran full speed past the old country road and into the six-foot-tall corn. He found a wide row between the corn stalks and slowed his run to a long-distance pace.

Thick corn leaves interlaced at head-level before him, cutting his face as he jogged. He held his forearms up to push aside the foliage as he pushed forward. Small red lines appeared on his arms. They itched like made. He fantasized briefly about having those machetes then glanced out between two corn stalks to see a county deputy car drive by, suspiciously slow.  Retreating back into the rows of corn, he could smell the corn and pesticides, and his eyes began to swell. His nose drained snot like a faucet. There was no way he could run back to Ashmore.

Media Studies Journals for Prof Davis Courses

The following journals will contain peer-reviewed articles appropriate for Media Studies papers.

Cal log-in required for access. I advise using the “library tunnel” Global Connect VPN as well.

Critical studies in media communication : CSMC

Media, culture & society (Online)

Journal of media economics (Online)

Media law & policy (Online)

Television & new media.

New media & society.

Media industries (Austin, Tex.)

Journal of broadcasting & electronic media.

Journal of mass media ethics : MME.

Media history.

Media psychology.

Journal of media ethics (Online)

The journal of media law.

Global media journal.

Journal of broadcasting & electronic media (Online)

Global media journal (Canadian edition). English.

Social media + society.

New media & society (Online)

Journal of communication (Online)

Journalism & communication monographs.

Mass communication & society.

Journalism & mass communication quarterly.

Mortal Matters and Change

My husband was being a jerk all weekend, so I left to get some things at the store. When I arrived, a gentle older man sat crisscross-applesauce with a strange smile. I thought of how mean Jerry, my husband, had been that morning, and I started to smile like a smile could put a bit more happiness in the world to make up for all the jerks. I realized the older man was returning the smile I had on my face, and I said, how do you do? He said hello, and I turned to buy some candles for my mother’s birthday.

I felt like a real meanie for ignoring him. You know, just looking away from his smile. So I turned back to him. “No,” I said, “how are you. What has brought you to this place in the cold?” Yeah! So this is what I recall him saying.

Humans have done it, my dear. Humans and the love of . . . well, just humans. The sidewalk did but the sidewalk is less at fault. It was humans and not the sidewalk, if we need to make distinctions. Humans, because of the highly entertaining curse of self-awareness, can be a bit judgy. Some would say humans are arrogant.

Surely we are arrogant individually, you see. A human dressed in fine silks and polyester approached me the other day when I was begging for alms.

She said, “You should use your body to be useful and earn your money.”

I said, “Why is the money in your pocket yours and not mine?”

She responded, “For I have earned it though the sweat of my brow. You do nothing and expect reward.”

I showed her the sweat that had beaded on my forehead since our conversation had begun. “Verily, I have labored with you in this moment here in front of this well stocked Target superstore. Behold how I shiver with fear of your fine boots as I imagine them lodged in my ribs or deftly overturning my small collection plate with a swift kick.”

The woman in silk and polyester made a sour expression and turned away. As she walked away and through the automated, sliding doors, her piano scarf fluttered in the rush of heated air escaping from within. The warmth brushed against my cheek, and I was reminded of the cold in my bones as I sat cross-legged – just as I do before you now, young lady. It was clear to me that she was unmoved by my thinking. The woman felt my use of matter was of lesser quality than her use of the matter she had under her control. Was she arrogant? Perhaps. But I am not referring to individual arrogance. This is but a trickling stream by comparison to the bulging deluge of human hubris in judging collections of matter generally. In our hierarchy of beings.

How can we box existence into hierarchies? So arbitrary! So arrogant! Yet, there is a functional hierarchy of being that informs how much respect humans accord phenomena in the world.

Rocks can be stepped on and ground up without remorse.

Trees can be shredded and pulped without a lot of remorse.

Fish, chicken and cattle can be harvested and slaughtered without full remorse.

Monkeys and other non-food animals can be killed but, unless self-preservation is the purpose, dead monkeys deserve some remorse according to human standards.

Some wonderful idiots say eyes are the gateway to the soul. What they likely mean is that we can recognize an independent existence worthy of respect and privilege within the constellation of matter that has irised eyeballs. The evidence?! Ha! Animals with eye movements more like our own tend to be treated better. Humans more easily see them as peers in existence – if not equals. We can see how this standard of evaluating animal worth via the eyes manifests culturally in films and other fantasies that explain how “all dogs go to heaven.” Dead or cold eyes in robots indicate the failure of machines to reproduce humans faithfully. But eyes are only part of the picture. Eyes are the layman’s shortcut to the hierarchy of being!

Sir? Spare a dollar? No?

Anyway, this is the height of arrogance, some would argue. Pigs have said so. An octopus once did too, but he was a rare ocean-bound critic. Cephalopods have little experience with us for humanity’s foibles to be widely understood among them, but that octopus had some clever barbs! I wish I had written them down – but words are only one use of ink I’m sure that wily, many-armed bastard would remind me before jetting off into the murk.

He was right to leave me. I had no business in the worlds of deep water. Still, I wanted to defend us humans. We are just anxious about dying. We are “on edge” as they say. What edge? The edge of existence. A precipice of known and unknown. The sudden sense that we aren’t even on the edge anymore but falling. Falling but with no memory of what slippery cad threw us into this mysterious pit, the bottom of which we cannot see. “You’d be anxious too!” I wanted to yell at the retreating octopus.

My point is this: anxiety has a strange consequence for how we go about labeling the world and distinguishing the configurations of matter around us. That is why the trees call us “the Matter Prone to Worried Pondering.” Evergreens do, at least. Majestic palms call us “Something’s the Matter Matter.” Tropicals think they are funny. They are. I laugh every time I realize there is a banana in my mouth. One can’t have slaughter without a laugh!

Do you have a banana? No? Nevermind. We are talking about nervousness of knowing that there is an end of one’s consciousness. Right? Yes.

Our sense that something’s the matter drives us to strange, sometimes compulsive, behavior. Our obsession with hierarchy is an example.

Morally, we accord the tree more rights and privileges than the stone because it is living -as we define it. We despair at a child smashing a tree more so than that child smashing a stone. The tree has something to lose we can easily recognize: life. But what is life but matter organized into super-reactive form?

Spare a dollar? What? When you come out you will have one? Ok.

He won’t come out with the change he promised, but that is alright. That is alright.

Where was I? Where were you? Trees? Yes. Generally, we accord more privilege to the bird then we do the tree. Why? Trees are less discernibly reactive to the environment than the bird. Birds cease to move when chopped in half. The tree never moved at all, and its signs of life slowly disappear to human eyes. It reacts more slowly to the environment. Is this reason to prefer the tree’s matter be reconfigured than that of the birds?

I propose the thought experiment. Would we accord reactive plants a higher place in our ontologies if they were more often reactive? Sensitive plants or Venus Fly Traps? An easily offended fern?

But the world around us is just states of matter. Some more like us. Some less. Some are very mobile in how they use matter. Some sit in stony silence. Some as noisy as us. When you hit some with your favorite stick, they just take it and don’t respond. When you hit others, they run away or get grumpy.

And we would categorize them. “This one, a tree, just takes the axe blow until it falls down. This one is harder than the axe head and stands firm against the blade. This one coming out of Target sees the axe and runs the other way making baleful noises.” Good information for creating categories of matter in order to feel safer in a world that will ultimately kill you by re-configuring your state of matter.

The best part is that the world we fear so often, its sharp edges, the mugger, the violent spouse, it is just a continuation of us. It is almost as if it calls us to rejoin the so-called inert state of being. “Your reactivity is exhausting. Come back to us and be still.” But the ear is just a metaphor to matter. A device to hear itself. The revelation of spirit unto spirit? Hardly. Revelation of matter unto matter.

Of course, all this anxious pondering took place well before philosophers came up with words like ontology, Dasein, and other fancy phrases for ranking forms of matter. Across many independent cultures, these hierarchies all had a curious similarity: humans were at the top. Cuttlefish be damned!

Spare some change?

I admit it is a little cringy. Humans putting themselves at the top all the time? We can rationalize why. It was only natural that humans found themselves at the top of these efforts to catalog all of matter. By the time humans were creating and exchanging the relevant charts and graphs, we had appeared to conquer the big toothy cats and cephalopods alike.

More or less. We still get chewed up by bears occasionally, but we tend to blame ourselves if we meet misfortune at the hands of the “lesser” beings. A violent bear is unworthy of a declaration of war, for instance. We don’t hold one bear’s eviscerating overreaction to humans camping nearby as a premise to kill other bears that bear hung out with. We reserve that guilty-by-association reasoning for other humans. We stop their reactivity so our own reactivity will triumph! So OUR organization of matter, like deck chairs on the Titanic, will prevail.

So much matter! So many different types of matter! We must categorize. That is a tree. Very nice! Look beneath the tree. That shadow of muscle with its piercing eyes and, wait a moment. Yes, those are flesh-tearing teeth. That is a cat that will eat me. We can imagine them peering into the dark of night and declaring, “Let us distinguish these two forms of matter. Clearly doing so will be helpful.”

Thus primordial categorization surely sprang from the need to eat and not be eaten followed by questions about why we cannot stop matter from changing beneath our feet.

The earliest eyes in evolutionary terms were merely light sensing parts of sea life. It was useful to know where the sun was because that is where there was more plankton or algae or smaller sea life to eat. Darkness meant death. Light meant continued life.

So, as matter that is ever-revising itself into new compositions, we live. To continue living for whatever reason -to have children, to love each other, to eat good food, to watch every installment of the Transformers franchise-  we categorized the matter surrounding us to survive. To go on. To survive. To know Michael Bay’s cinematic moods more intimately . . .

We saw the variety of things in the world and became attentive to other forms of matter. We began the enterprise, like Adam in the garden, of cataloging all the stuff to forms of matter that were also in the business of living.

The more imaginative and self-deprecating cultures created an invisible topmost layer of gods, angels and demons who had helped us with our anxieties as we first began to grapple with loved ones having an expiration date. Gods at the top. Then some angels or other super-powered yet humanoid group with too many eyes or bird wings or vendettas against strong snakes. These below-god-above-humans types are often in obedience to the top of the Being Pyramids we construct in our anxious pondering of the world around us.

“Here is my mother. She is here at my feet by the fire but no longer there. Asleep forever. But I loved her interactivity! Where did they go? Can I meet them again? How can a person, so helpful and comforting -if occasionally a bit bossy- become just plain matter?”

Maybe the functional ontology of humanity is based on, first, the degrees of interactivity with the environment. And, second, the degree of interactivity with humans. Yes, all human moral judgment is based on either the appearance of life (like our own) and then the similarity of that appearance to our own experience of life. Both are based on the “degrees of interaction.”

The first degree of interaction is at the level of matter. All living things are, of course, collections of matter. Why matter seems to have worked itself up so much that it produced life is the biggest mystery and it need not detain us here.

We tend to value more highly and, hence, accord more rights to forms of matter that react to the environment. On this scale, “inanimate” and “animate” are the broadest binary categories. But we can see more fine-grained hierarchical differentiation in human assessment of the phenomenological world.

Stones and hammers, some say, have only being-in-themselves. These things do not interact with the world. Some would point out that they make no choices in the course of being. Slime molds and lichen react to the world, growing in favorable conditions and bending toward light as a food source, but these hardly constitute “choices” in the human sense. Wolves and birds do make choices as they weigh courses of action. The wolf may want to invade the chicken coop, but she also knows the farmer will kill her. Wolves and birds choose according to self-preservation. Elephants and dolphins perhaps occupy an additional strata of choice-making when interacting with the environment. More complex social capacities in these species have greater choice in how they interact. Dolphins at play. Octopuses that reach out to human divers with curiosity. These beings make increasingly complex choices that go beyond life and death decisions. They thus enter a different ethical category.

So, we can create an ontology according to the degree and quality of choices each species appears capable of making. You and I here today can do this! We can also see these choices as a mere byproduct of increased interactivity with the environment. I propose, umph . . .

Suddenly, the man flinched. He quickened his speaking pace, the words spilling out at an incredible speed, but he was unable to finish. I looked up to the storefront having forgotten where I was. A blond woman in nice boots marched out of the Target with a teenaged store employee sheepishly following her. When I turned back, the man was gone, vanished like a ghost.

The store employee nodded, and I looked that way across the parking lot and saw him. The man was running with his small plate, some coins bouncing on the pavement in his wake. He clutched at his loose-waisted pants, a bit of his butt was showing.

“Was he bothering you, too?” the woman asked, her shopping bag clutched close to her side.

“Yes,” I said.

Basic Research Summary

Basic Research Summary

Teachers use research summaries to get students acquainted with the current arguments on a topic in an academic field. So, they inform us about a topic, but they also teach students to see the methods researchers use to make arguments. It can be a lesson on evaluating evidence.

There are two kinds of summaries. One is a “deep” and one “lite.”

Deep summaries not only outline the research in a study but also contextualize the research. For example, the summary of an article on consumption in America after World War II would also include references to other historians who have studied the period for comparison. Book reviews are a kind of deep summary.

Lite summaries focus on the information and arguments in the study. These are “lite” because they are shorter and do not contextualize the research. They are useful as quick reference when assembling a literature review or annotated bibliography.

For either type of summary, there is a common procedure in assessing the research you summarize.

First, scan the research. What is the main hypothesis or argument? What evidence did the researcher use? What are the key findings? (5 min)

Next, read the piece well and take notes on important features that may be important for a summary. (20-60 mins)

Once you are familiar with the argument, methods and conclusions, write the summary. Use the following overview to guide your writing process.

Light Research Summary Elements

  • APA style citation info as title
  • Introduction – offer a brief overview of the topic and its importance; include a concise description of the research questions or hypotheses pursued by the study’s authors. Finish intro by outlining the main argument/findings.
  • Methodology –  detail experimental methods and/or the type of primary evidence used to make the argument (e.g. types of experiments, surveys, historical sources, sampling, statistical analysis, etc.).
  • Results section – describe how the data/evidence led the researchers to their conclusions.
  • Conclusion/Discussion – interpret the results, theoretical models, the study strengths and limitations. What are the implications of the arguments made? How do the findings , conclusions, etc. Arguments and findings are revisited and validated or denied, based on how convincing the evidence is.

A Quit Facebook Movement? Some Academic Research

Facebook’s advertising practices have led some to question the social and political ramifications of social media. Is an automated advertising system promoting partisanship? Do algorithms point users to more politically extreme or polarizing content?

Here is a selection of public discourse related to these questions and FB’s social impact. Take a look.

Facebook in the news (video)

Facebook in the news (print)

Facebook and monopoly

Facebook and misinformation

Facebook and addictive behavior

Facebook and self-esteem

Facebook Critic Organizations

San Francisco, a Policy Sodom in the Conservative Mind

San Francisco’s iconic progressive image in the American mind has made the city a prime target for critical conservative commentary. In conservative media, California and the Bay often function as a symbol of liberal or Democratic policies. For example, a Fox News investigation (2019) of the unhoused in the city illustrates the San Francisco-as-dystopia symbolism in right-leaning mediaspheres. The investigation’s partisan lens is explicit: “to chronicle the toll progressive policies have had on the homeless crisis.”

The Fox journalist details the problem of those forced into the streets by inflated housing costs and inadequate social programs. How the story is framed makes all the difference. The investigation underlines the problem with anecdotes from the perspective of frustrated business owners and visitors appalled or frightened by street encounters with the poor, drug-addled and mentally ill. To Fox’s credit, the wealth gap exacerbating the issue becomes clear in interviews with Bay Area residents. All fair points about housing policy failures aside, the Fox piece frames the issue in two significant ways:

  1. The unhoused is a problem for visitors and the middle class who wish to use the city without the inconvenience of poverty-battered bodies in the street;
  2. A failure of “Democrats” and the progressive ideology SF has come to symbolize in the American imagination.

The report only lightly touches on inflated housing costs resulting from capitalist housing market dynamics and the wealth gap in the state. Instead, the story focuses the reader’s attention on arguments that a soft-on-crime agenda was central in creating the crisis. The report appears to be a piece on public policy. However, it becomes clear that the emphasis is on “failures of liberal programs” rather than an earnest journalistic exploration of proposed solutions to housing crises.

In public discourse, filtered through the business model of cable news, San Francisco is a means to a partisan end. In stories like this, the city is used as a symbol of progressive policy failures. The city is a character in a narrative that confirms the correctness of conservative politics. Comments on stories like these seem to confirm how the framing pits city progressives vs. non-city conservatives:

Strange how Liberals claim to be “progressive” and Conservatives “backward thinking”, yet their cities resemble something out of the Middle Ages, when the streets of large cities like London were open running sewers of human and animal waste. Now we can sit back and wait for all the old time epidemics like cholera and dysentery to make a return. Everything we have learned about the importance of public sanitation tossed aside by these “progressives”.

@Icomeinpeacenot, https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-map-shows-human-poop-complaints

The historical context for the emergence of these partisan news frames is important. The origins of conservative media city-bashing are rooted in transformation from a more unified, low-choice world of media of the 20th century to our current high-choice and politically fragmented environment.

Until around the 1980s, American media was a low-choice world. The media system was “low-choice” when TV news, for example, was produced by three or four mainstream networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) with roughly similar ideological perspectives. By the 1990s, Americans found themselves in a “high-choice” media environment.

The low-choice media environment had its flaws but it likewise had the benefit of putting Americans on the same page about the major problems we faced as a nation. Scholars and journalists of the 1970s could identify something like a mainstream public debate. The high-choice media world (after cable then satellite then digital and social media) made more perspectives available, but it also fragmented the public. Over time, the public’s use of media took shape around preferred news sites, guided by confirmation biases, selective attention and information “bubbles.” The diversity of available perspectives was supposed to be more democratic and empower citizens with access to information, but the high-choice media environment paradoxically allowed us to insulate ourselves from opposing views and the people who expressed them.

These gradual changes to the media system enabled new business models to specialize in partisan content. The introduction of Fox News in 1994 is a popular illustration of this late 20th century business model, but digital platforms also followed suit with the right-leaning Drudge Report (1995) and the liberal Daily Kos (2002). Today, Breitbart news, One American News and a number of other media start-ups are targeting these partisan audiences and competing for audience market share, often by expressing ever more partisan frames on American politics. Facebook’s leaked internal research has confirmed this trend. The leak shows how digital media companies profit when “core parts of its platform appear hardwired for spreading misinformation and divisive content.” For these companies, the civic decay stemming from this ideological war is a gold mine.

The way technology and business models have exacerbated partisanship in American politics challenges classic tenets of journalism. It has also disrupts the traditional function of news. Where 20th century journalists could think of news as a sort of schoolhouse, offering information to foster educated voting and self-governance, the 21st century has cultivated new functions of news in public life. The schoolhouse metaphor has given way to another functional metaphor: the church. Americans increasingly use news as a way to endorse a common ideological faith. Conservatives look to Tucker Carlson to confirm the evils of Nancy Pelosi and commiserate about the dangers of “creeping socialism.” MSNBC viewers tune in to see if Trump will be indicted for his role in the Capitol riots following Biden’s election. In many ways, our choice of news is a choice of a dramatically illustrated world view. The faithful, after all, don’t go to church to learn something new about what happened to Jesus. They go to participate in a community of shared values and fellowship.

Partisan news and the reorganization of the public into news communities of faith helps explain the fragmentation of the public and the use of San Francisco as a symbol for conservative news audiences. Liberals can wonder why the farmers of Kansas vote against their own economic interests. In each case, the cultural chasm widens as news media marshal cities and places as symbols of difference and antagonism rather than one people working as a larger collective.

Russia’s RT as metanews

The year 2008 was important to understand RT’s evolving purpose in world affairs. After relative obscurity following its 2005 launch, RT began countering American and NATO news regarding Russian intervention in South Ossetia, Georgia. RT offered a counternarrative: Russian intervention was defensive and humanitarian, and Russia as a benevolent actor in world affairs. Most importantly, RT framed itself as an underdog in a battle for truth in the murky world of global politics and war.

A profile of RT in The New Statesmen in 2013 noted how “Russian journalists fought back” by aggressively portraying Russia’s humanitarian intentions and citing examples of American news stifling or suppressing Russian perspectives:  

Some western channels, particularly Fox News, were hardly less biased in covering the war. RT repeatedly aired a Fox interview in which two South Ossetians from California tried to thank the Russian government but were cut off by the anchor. Fox’s many detractors could watch the take-downs on YouTube, which started carrying RT in 2007. Simonyan’s channel began to win a whole new audience.

This period in RT’s development illustrates how a war over framing international conflict led RT its unique style of international journalism: flashy, daring, brash, anti-establishment, populist, etc. But RT also made the battle over news narratives a part of their coverage. The channel’s turn to media criticism appealed to the growing suspicions of media bias and offered RT’s coverage as a way to escape corporate media.  

Was the Georgian war a turning point for the coverage and tone of RT? Perhaps. By challenging the coverage of Western news media giants, RT tapped into the growing suspicion of American news media. There was a market for those suspicious of mainstream journalism. Much like Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes filled a market for conservative opinion with Fox News a decade earlier, RT saw an audience they could develop by portraying the channel as the uncorrupted truth-teller in a world of insider politics and patriotic stooges . . . all while thumbing their nose at authorities. Russia has continued to play media critic, self-righteously dressing down UK regulators for violating RT’s right to broadcast after complaints.

By portraying itself as the “anti-Fox,” RT made the meta-turn to commentary on news as an extension of the critique of America and American leadership. By the 2010s, RT had embraced the anti-establishment tone reminiscent of a sarcastic teenager rebelling against the overbearing father. The host of RT’s The Resident roams the streets of New York, interviewing passers by about their suspicions of media. “Special reports” have a cynical edge as the reporter reviews the considerable number of U.S. military and intelligence officials on MSNBC’s payroll for news commentary.

For a bulk of the 20th century, professional broadcast journalism organized public opinion guided by “professional” standards of newsworthiness and neutral reporting (Hallin 1994; Schudson 2001). Professional, neutral reporting was well suited to the needs of journalism of the network and early cable era. U.S. networks wanted to speak to mass audiences and maximize advertising revenues. As a business model, it was best not to offend any region of the country. Informative, factual news about matters of broad interest was a safe bet for these networks. Walter Cronkite intended to speak to and for a nation.

Though producers have moved online, the demand for neutral reporting remains, somewhat like a vestigial tail. The cultural expectation of neutrality and objectivity that underlie common public criticism of newsrooms works well for RT. The expectation has outlasted the conditions that made it possible during the “gatekeeper” era of professional news. I’m reminded of Max Boot’s concern over conspiracy theory in the digital age:

“The online world is a post-truth space where there are no undisputed facts, only competing narratives, and even the most deranged claims (e.g., QAnon) can aggregate an audience.”

This is when RT’s motto makes the most sense as effective branding: Question More. The network doubles down on this outsider credibility in both branding and self-referential reporting. When regulators or critics accuse the channel of bias in coverage, RT’s apologists can reasonably retort that all media are biased. That all news is framed in narrative. But this sidesteps the real question . . . Is RT offering criticism of journalistic failures or a merchant of doubt availing itself of the ultimate unmooring of truth in public discourse? How might Russian interests be served by a post-truth American public?

Academic Advice: Requesting a letter of recommendation

Academic Advice: Requesting a letter of recommendation
Image credit: Thought Co. https://www.thoughtco.com/recommendation-letters-definition-and-types-466796

Letters of recommendation can be a crucial part of applications to jobs and graduate schools. A detailed letter from a former instructor is particularly helpful in applying to graduate programs. Requesting letters involves a few steps that let the potential writer know who you are, where you are going and why you deserve a recommendation.

Each potential recommender may have specific needs to write for you, but here is a general guide to requesting letters.

  1. Prepare documents that will support the recommendation (statement of purpose, cover letter, Resume/CV, research interests, career plans, a paper composed for the instructor). These help the potential writer identify your strengths and academic/career direction.
  2. In your initial request, briefly detail the programs to which you are applying and remind the potential writer of relevant experiences in their class (e.g. a piece of work you’ve done for/with them).
  3. Ask potential recommenders if they need additional material to write for you. Some recommendation writers request descriptions of the programs to which you are applying, for example. Offer links to the programs to which you are applying.
  4. In large classes, reach out to your GSI (Graduate Student Instructor) or TA (Teaching Assistant) for the recommendation. Strong recommendations reflect deep familiarity with the student, and the lead professor may not have enough experience with your work to write the kind of letter you will need. A GSI or TA with whom you have a good relationship can offer such details.
  5. Ask about and use the letter-delivery system preferred by the potential recommender and/or admissions committee (Interfolio; direct emails from the institution, etc.).
  6. Many professors advise that you waive the right to see the recommendation. Doing so gives the letter more credibility in the eyes of admissions committees.
  7. Give your writer 6 weeks notice before the recommendation due date.

The first email to your potential recommender should be fairly brief (1-2 paragraphs) and offer enough information for the instructor to recall your work as a student. A link to major papers or projects you did for the course is often useful for both purposes. The reminder of who you are could also be a brief reference to a particularly memorable conversation during office hours or other unique experience with the instructor.

The point of the recommendation letter is to make you stand out from other applicants. Your recommendation request should do the same. Additional guidance from Cal’s career center can be found here.

Good luck with your applications!