scholarly journals Personal frameworks and subjective truth: New Journalism and the 1972 U.S. presidential election

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ashlee Amanda Nelson

<p>This thesis examines the reportage of the New Journalists who covered the United States 1972 presidential campaign. Nineteen seventy-two was a key year in the development of New Journalism, marking a peak in output from successful writers, as well as in the critical attention paid to debates about the mode. Nineteen seventy-two was also an important year in the development of campaign journalism, a system which only occurred every four years and had not changed significantly since the time of Theodore Roosevelt. The system was not equipped to deal with the socio-political chaos of the time, or the attempts by Richard Nixon at manipulating how the campaign was covered. New Journalism was a mode founded in part on the idea that old methods of journalism needed to change to meet the needs of contemporary society, and in their coverage of the 1972 campaign the New Journalists were able to apply their arguments for change to their campaign reportage. Thus the convergence of the campaign reportage cycle with the peak of New Journalism’s development represents a key moment in the development of both New Journalism and campaign journalism.  I use the campaign reportage of Timothy Crouse in The Boys on the Bus, Norman Mailer in St. George and the Godfather, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, and Gloria Steinem in “Coming of Age with McGovern” as case studies for the role of New Journalism at this moment in literary journalism history. As writers who rejected the mainstream press’s requirement for objectivity, the New Journalists occupied a unique role in the campaign coverage by offering different agendas and more personal frameworks than the mainstream media. I examine the framework of each of these writers’ reportage, and how their secondary agendas shaped their consciously personal narratives of the campaign. These secondary agendas and personal narratives give the New Journalists’ reportage a lasting meaning and cultural significance beyond the initial context of reporting on the campaign, and beyond the victory of Nixon, whom all four of the New Journalists analysed in this thesis opposed.  As my examination of Crouse’s, Mailer’s, Thompson’s, and Steinem’s New Journalism about the 1972 campaign establishes, this microcosm represents a key point in the development of New Journalism. The research and analysis in this thesis argues that the field of study devoted to New Journalism needs to re-think some of the ways the mode has been written about. There are assumptions in the critical discourse that have been consistently accepted but which should be questioned further. It is crucial to an in-depth understanding of the mode that New Journalism scholarship reassess some of the ideas that we have become certain about and make sure they actually fit the aims and output of the New Journalists at the time. The importance of understanding the role of personal frameworks and secondary agendas in campaign journalism reaches beyond New Journalism and, as I argue in the conclusion to this thesis, has been demonstrated to be keenly relevant by the role of the press in the 2016 presidential election and the striking similarities between the 1972 and 2016 campaigns.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ashlee Amanda Nelson

<p>This thesis examines the reportage of the New Journalists who covered the United States 1972 presidential campaign. Nineteen seventy-two was a key year in the development of New Journalism, marking a peak in output from successful writers, as well as in the critical attention paid to debates about the mode. Nineteen seventy-two was also an important year in the development of campaign journalism, a system which only occurred every four years and had not changed significantly since the time of Theodore Roosevelt. The system was not equipped to deal with the socio-political chaos of the time, or the attempts by Richard Nixon at manipulating how the campaign was covered. New Journalism was a mode founded in part on the idea that old methods of journalism needed to change to meet the needs of contemporary society, and in their coverage of the 1972 campaign the New Journalists were able to apply their arguments for change to their campaign reportage. Thus the convergence of the campaign reportage cycle with the peak of New Journalism’s development represents a key moment in the development of both New Journalism and campaign journalism.  I use the campaign reportage of Timothy Crouse in The Boys on the Bus, Norman Mailer in St. George and the Godfather, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, and Gloria Steinem in “Coming of Age with McGovern” as case studies for the role of New Journalism at this moment in literary journalism history. As writers who rejected the mainstream press’s requirement for objectivity, the New Journalists occupied a unique role in the campaign coverage by offering different agendas and more personal frameworks than the mainstream media. I examine the framework of each of these writers’ reportage, and how their secondary agendas shaped their consciously personal narratives of the campaign. These secondary agendas and personal narratives give the New Journalists’ reportage a lasting meaning and cultural significance beyond the initial context of reporting on the campaign, and beyond the victory of Nixon, whom all four of the New Journalists analysed in this thesis opposed.  As my examination of Crouse’s, Mailer’s, Thompson’s, and Steinem’s New Journalism about the 1972 campaign establishes, this microcosm represents a key point in the development of New Journalism. The research and analysis in this thesis argues that the field of study devoted to New Journalism needs to re-think some of the ways the mode has been written about. There are assumptions in the critical discourse that have been consistently accepted but which should be questioned further. It is crucial to an in-depth understanding of the mode that New Journalism scholarship reassess some of the ideas that we have become certain about and make sure they actually fit the aims and output of the New Journalists at the time. The importance of understanding the role of personal frameworks and secondary agendas in campaign journalism reaches beyond New Journalism and, as I argue in the conclusion to this thesis, has been demonstrated to be keenly relevant by the role of the press in the 2016 presidential election and the striking similarities between the 1972 and 2016 campaigns.</p>


Author(s):  
Linda J. Lumsden

This essay traces the evolution of scholarship on the role of a broad range of media in the American suffrage movement, including the suffrage press, plays, films, and consumer goods as well as mainstream news representations of the movement. The essay retrieves individual suffrage editors and publications to historical memory and considers the social construction of gender in mainstream media and suffragists’ “self-mediation”; the intersection of race, class, and gender in media accounts of woman suffrage; the marketing of woman suffrage; and insights into related fields, including political science, social movements, journalism history, popular culture, literary studies, and communications studies. The essay traces how scholarship has evolved from casting woman suffrage as a white, middle-class, Northeastern movement dominated by a few leaders to a diverse mix of activists across the United States.


Author(s):  
Caroline Powley

Cities are an ever-changing space, filled with commerce and community. Signage plays a strong role in the visual narrative of the urban environment. It creates a constant visual hum, a street level monologue of promotion, identification and direction. Commercial signs are designed to serve and improve business. So, what role could an old, fading or non-functioning piece of signage possibly play in our neoliberal capitalist society? From a designer’s perspective, there’s a lot to like—the craftsmanship, the idiosyncrasies of a hand-generated pieceof typography, the sense of nostalgia for a time before globalisation and brand guidelines took over. Looking at historic signs from a broader context they also represent an “intricate urban history.”1 They speak of the changing face of commercial enterprise, social values and cultural expression. Even when they no longer serve their original semantic role of commercial promotion, they “accumulate rich layers of meaning. They no longer merely advertise, they are valued in and of themselves. They become icons.”2 The semiotic function of an historic sign shifts to a new role—signifying notions of survival, continuity and loss. They also feed into our complex personal narratives of place, identity and community.3 These multiple and interwoven values can form the cultural significance of historic signs. Despite this recognisable value, historic signage tends to fall through the gaps of heritage practice and legislation in New Zealand. This paper offers a set of case studies that represent a range of possible outcomes for historic signs, when they exist outside a system of heritage management. I propose six categories for framing the case studies: remain, repair, regenerate, relocate, replace and remove. These examples are combined with a broader reflection on the value of historic signage and an overview of relevant heritage practice in New Zealand. The intention is to encourage reflection on the possible heritage significance of historic signage and our current approach to assessment, scheduling and conservation.


Author(s):  
Corwin Smidt

This article examines the role of Catholics within the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Although Catholics were once a crucial and dependable component of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, their vote in more recent years has been much more splintered. Nevertheless, Catholics have been deemed to be an important “swing vote” in American politics today, as in recent presidential elections they have aligned with the national popular vote. This article therefore focuses on the part that Catholics played within the 2020 presidential election process. It addresses the level of political change and continuity within the ranks of Catholics over the past several elections, how they voted in the Democratic primaries during the initial stages of the 2020 presidential election, their level of support for different candidates over the course of the campaign, how they ultimately came to cast their ballots in the 2020 election, and the extent to which their voting patterns in 2020 differed from that of 2016.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-180
Author(s):  
D. Klyuchevskiy

The purpose of this article is to analyze the experience of using social networks as a political marketing tool in the US presidential elections. This article partially touches upon the global topic of marketization and digitalization of both the political process in general and at the level of the US presidential election. The paper highlights the changing role of social media as a policy tool, which today has become not only a tool for distributing content, but also one of the tools for analyzing data from the electorate. The author explores the possibilities of social networks, their strengths and weaknesses and development prospects in the field of political marketing. The work touches upon the role of social networks in the formation of «Electronic Democracy», their impact on the candidate's image and the relationship with the personalization of politics in the United States. The main method in the article is comparative analysis. The result was the definition of the role, key features of the mentioned social networks in the field of modern politics. A certain theoretical contribution is seen in the argumentation of the following observations: the speed of interaction between the candidate and the voter through social networks has increased, in addition, the area of image-making has been partially «digitalized». It was revealed that technologies of information influence on American voters, which positively influenced the results of the 2016 presidential election for the Republican candidate, lowered D. Trump's ratings during the 2020 elections.


2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142110520
Author(s):  
Laura Napolitano ◽  
Patricia Tevington ◽  
Patrick J. Carr ◽  
Maria Kefalas

While student loans play a large role in the financing of higher education, there has been relatively little qualitative work on how young adults understand their debt burdens and the debt’s perceived future impact. We examine this topic utilizing a sample of 105 young people from working-, middle-, and upper middle-class backgrounds who experienced young adulthood during the Great Recession. While most respondents are accepting of debt at the time of postsecondary enrollment, their inability to meet the demands of their debt leads to frustration and anxiety. Further, many respondents are concerned that this debt will impact their ability to support themselves and transition into the role of a marital partner, although this varies across social class backgrounds and debt levels. We argue that this debt, and its corresponding repercussions, are likely to contribute to the continued bifurcation of family life in the United States.


Author(s):  
Karolina Toka

Jordan Peele’s 2017 social thriller Get Out depicts a peculiar form of body swap resulting from the uncanny desires of the Armitage family to seize captured black bodies and use them as carriers of their white minds. This paper offers a reading of the movie’s disturbing plot through the lens of the origins and cultural significance of blackface. For the sake of argument, in this article blackface is to be understood as a cultural phenomenon encompassing the symbolic role of black people basic to the US society, which articulates the ambiguity of celebration and exploitation of blackness in American popular culture. This article draws on the theoretical framework of blackface developed by Lott, Rogin, Ellison, and Gubar, in order to explore the Get Out’s complex commentary on the twenty-first century race relations in the United States. As a result, this paper turns the spotlight on the mechanisms of racist thinking in the United States, by showing the movie’s use of the apparatus underpinning blackface.


2020 ◽  
pp. 16-45
Author(s):  
Sebastián Hurtado-Torres

This chapter discusses the role of the U.S. embassy in Santiago in the Chilean presidential election of 1964. One of the leading candidates in the race, Salvador Allende, was an avowed Marxist and the standard-bearer of the Popular Action Front (FRAP), a coalition of Socialists and Communists formed in 1958. Allende's main contender was Eduardo Frei Montalva, the undisputed leader of the Christian Democratic Party. For the United States, an Allende victory in the presidential election would entail a huge setback in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, the United States supported the candidacy of Eduardo Frei, whose project seemed an excellent alternative to the revolutionary path proposed by the Marxist Left and a good representation of the goals and values of the Alliance for Progress. The U.S. ambassador in Chile, Charles Cole, and more so the political staff of the embassy in Santiago, played an important role in shaping the race and advising the main chiefs of Eduardo Frei's political campaign, and even Frei himself, in the course of 1964. The mostly untold story of the U.S. embassy's involvement in the 1964 presidential race is an excellent example of the way in which U.S. foreign policy was carried out on the ground and, in many situations, in the open.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Mihailidis ◽  
Samantha Viotty

This article explores the phenomenon of spectacle in the lead up and immediate aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Through the spread of misinformation, the appropriation of cultural iconography, and the willing engagement of mainstream media to perpetuate partisan and polarizing information, the proliferation of populist rhetoric, polarizing views, and vitriolic opinions spread. Revisiting the world of critical theorist Guy Debord, this article argues that the proliferation of citizen-drive spectacle is unique in its origination and perpetuation, and a direct result of an increasingly polarized and distrustful public spending an increasing amount of time in homophilous networks where contrarian views are few and far between. We apply the frame of spreadable media to explore how citizen expression online initiated, sustained, and expanded the media spectacle that pervaded the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The conclusion of this work argues that media literacies, as a popular response mechanism to help cultivate more critical consumers of media, must be repositioned to respond to an era of partisanship and distrust. We present a set of considerations for repositioning the literacies to focus on critique and creation of media in support of a common good, and that can respond meaningfully in an era of spreadability, connectivity, and spectacle.


Author(s):  
Chloe Ahmann

AbstractThis article interrogates the discursive relationship between school reform and redemption in the United States by examining the personal narratives of Teach For America corps members. After tracing the history of Teach For America and describing the rites of passage in which teachers’ “redemptive stories” are told, I analyze the generic arc that underlies them and show that it mirrors broader processes of in-group socialization. In doing so, I argue that Teach For America’s brand of redemptive storytelling – in addition to crafting individual identity, contributing to group cohesion, and enlivening performance at ritualized events – also affects organizational authority. As corps members master their stories of reform and redemption, paralleling the path to becoming “master teachers,” they participate in a process of “becoming” that reproduces in micro-scale the maturation of Teach For America. More profoundly, these transformations represent a distinct response to traditions of American confessional storytelling and the accountability-based education movement. Redemptive stories thus bind the socialization of the individual reformer to issues afoot more broadly in the province of education policy.


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