Ronald N. Jacobs

The space of opinion : media intellectuals and the public sphere

Chapter 1. Media Commentary and the Space of Opinion Chapter 2. A History of Opinion in the U.S. Media Chapter 3. Media and Opinion Formation: Toward a New Theory of Deliberative Politics Chapter 4. Who Speaks in the Space of Opinion? Chapter 5. Formats and Norms in the U.S. Space of Opinion Chapter 6. Rhetorics in the Space of Contemporary U.S. Opinion Chapter 7. The Enron Scandal Chapter 8. The War on Terror Chapter 9. The Future of Opinion

Romance, Irony, and Solidarity

Contemporary social theory has turned increasingly to concepts such as civil society, community, and the public sphere in order to theorize about the construction of vital, democratic and solidaristic political cultures. The dominant prescriptions for attaining this end invoke the need for institutional and procedural reform, but overlook the autonomous role of culture in shaping and defining the forms of social solidarity. This article proposes a model of solidarity based on the two genres of Romance and Irony, and argues that these narrative forms offer useful vocabularies for organizing public discourse within and between civil society and its constituent communities. Whilst unable to sustain fully-inclusive and solidaristic political cultures on their own, in combination the genres of Romance and Irony allow for solidaristic forms built around tolerance, reflexivity, and intersubjectivity.

Narrative and Legitimacy: U.S. Congressional Debates about the Nonprofit Sector*

This article develops a theory about the narrative foundations of public policy. Politicians draw on specific types of narratives in order to connect the policies they are proposing, the needs of the public, and their own needs for legitimacy. In particular, politicians are drawn to policy narratives in which they themselves occupy the central and heroic character position, and where they are able to protect the scope of their jurisdictional authority. We demonstrate how this works through a historical analysis of congressional debate about the nonprofit sector in the United States. Two competing narratives framed these debates: (1) a selfless charity narrative, in which politicians try to empower heroic charity workers and philanthropists, and then stay out of the way; and (2) a masquerade narrative, in which fake charities are taking advantage of the nonprofit tax exemption, in order to pursue a variety of noncivic and dangerous activities. Members of Congress quickly adopted the masquerade narrative as the dominant framework for discussing the nonprofit sector because it provided a more powerful and flexible rhetoric for reproducing their political legitimacy. By developing innovative elaborations of the masquerade narrative (i.e., identifying new categories of “false heroes”), while remaining faithful to its underlying narrative format, politicians were able to increase the persuasive impact of their legislative agendas. We argue that the narrative aspects of political debate are a central component of the policy-making process because they link cultural and political interests in a way that involves the mastery of cultural structure as well as the creativity of cultural performance.

Media Publicity and the Voluntary Sector: The Case of Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

Media publicity is an important resource for contemporary voluntary associations, but very little is actually known about the resources and organizational characteristics that are most important for getting media attention. To address this question, we collected and analyzed data on the organizational attributes and news publicity of 739 nonprofit organizations in New York City. We find that an organizations income, paid staff, membership size, and library resources are significantly related to getting media publicity, whereas the number of chapter affiliations is inversely related to publicity. Association type is also a significant factor that influences an organizations ability to get publicity. We discuss the implications that these findings have for current debates about advocacy and civic engagement in the nonprofit sector.

The Problem with Tragic Narratives: Lessons from the Los Angeles Uprising

This article considers the different media narratives about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, in order to explain how the genre of tragedy became the most powerful representational form for talking about race and civil society during the 1990s. Three narrative mechanisms were used to shift discussions of race and civil society toward the tragic frame: (1) a change in temporality, (2) the rhetorical failures of politicians, and (3) the emplotment of new events into the dominant tragic narratives. Because most crises get their dramatic power from the tension between romance and tragedy, the shift to tragic discourse led to cynicism, skepticism, resignation, and inaction. The article concludes by arguing that the search for genre imbalance is an important tool for those interested in studying culture and ideology during times of crisis.

Race, Media and Civil Society

This article examines current theoretical debates about the public sphere by looking through the prism of race and the media. The history of the black public sphere in the United States illustrates why the publicity strategies of marginalized groups cannot concentrate solely on `mainstream media and dominant publics, but must also include active participation in, and cultivation of, alternative public spheres. Historically, the black press has served three important functions: providing a forum for debate and self-improvement; monitoring the mainstream press; and increasing black visibility in white civil society. Because a tolerant and inclusive civil society is most likely when there is a differentiated and diverse set of communications media, the current crisis of the black press is a crisis for American civil society. Those in the `mainstream media have a responsibility to respond to this crisis by recognizing the importance of alternative publics and increasing their engagement with the African-American press.

The Hermeneutics of Hannity: Format Innovation in the Space of Opinion After September 11

This article explores changes in media and political culture in the US since 11 September 2001. Our specific focus is opinion media on cable television, in particular Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes program. We argue that the events of September 11 provided an opportunity for conservative pundits to respond to some of the cultural limitations that had been associated with the cable talk format, creating a new cultural environment for mediated political debate in the US. These changes have pushed the cable talk shows even further away from the dominant practices of the journalistic field, turning them into clearly-delineated partisan interpretive communities, in which the crafting of political narratives is moving beyond the control of political party leaders.

Media meta-commentary and the performance of expertise

This article examines the rise of meta-commentary in US media, and considers the consequences it has for the social construction and the performance of intellectual expertise. Media meta-commentary is defined as critical reflection about media practices and performances, in which the primary basis for criticism is the comparison of different media formats. Meta-commentary began to emerge with the differentiation of the aesthetic sphere and the development of a new kind of expert, the cultural critic. Cultural criticism led to a proliferation of expert performance styles, including a type of counter-performance that rejects the somber and serious nature of traditional intellectual practices. By the 1980s, these new styles of intellectual performance were being reinforced by important institutional and regulatory changes within the media industry, and ultimately by the proliferation of new digital technologies and DIY culture. By the twenty-first century, media meta-commentary had become a distinctive and peculiar form of expert discourse, which legitimates the act of criticism while also relativizing it. The current environment suggests two possible outcomes: a hopeful one that encourages greater reflexivity, and a more ominous one that points toward populism.

Culture and comparative media research: Narratives about Internet privacy policy in Chinese, U.S., and UK newspapers

ABSTRACT This article compares American, British, and Chinese news coverage of Internet privacy policies. Specifically, we examine media discourse about the “real-name” policies established by Facebook and Weibo. We find that U.S. and UK news coverage of Internet privacy policy is broadly similar, when compared with the more authoritarian–corporatist media system in China. British and U.S. newspapers were much more independent from state control, and were able to maintain a more critical stance than the Chinese newspapers. But there were additional factors that shaped the patterns in news discourse in complicated ways, which are related to (a) the difference between domestic and international news genres, (b) specific narratives about national identity, and (c) more general discourses about civil society, democracy, and the public good. We suggest that the range of comparative media research can be extended by paying attention to how these cultural factors interact with media system dynamics.

Surfing Life: Surface, Substructure and the Commodification of the Sublime

identity, and/or (6) feels politically excluded in the country of settlement. Chapter Two unfortunately suffers from biases in the selection of her interviewees (clearly acknowledged by the author) and from her insistence on drawing numerical conclusions from a sample too small to be relevant: 21 Kurds, 40 Turks, and 40 Surinamese. Nonetheless, the richness of the empirical material is visible in the many interview fragments, which support the validity of her analysis. In Chapter Three, Mügge relies on the analysis of migrants’ networks conducted by the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam to identify which specific ties with host and home country actors trigger specific types of transnational political activities among immigrants. This network analysis permits her to confirm across different case studies the conclusions that had previously only been made on a caseby-case basis. The two other research questions are addressed in the last three chapters of the book, each devoted to an individual case study. The biggest strength of these chapters is that they look at how relations with the home state (e.g., instrumental relations between Turks abroad and Turkey versus conflictive relations between Kurds abroad and Turkey), the type of migration (labor migration for the Turks and Kurds versus post-colonial migration for the Surinamese), and the political opportunity structure offered to these different groups in the Netherlands affect transnational political participation. These chapters provide the reader with an extremely rich historical account of the evolution of transnational political participation of these three migrant communities in the Netherlands. It is to be mentioned, though, that with the 241 in-depth interviews conducted with representatives of organizations based in the Netherlands and the sending countries, the voices of interviewees too often remain absent from these chapters. The magnitude of the fieldwork conducted by Mügge is no doubt a highly ambitious undertaking, and it would be interesting to read some individuals’ responses in more detail, as well as see more details on the methodology in the appendix. Three main lessons can be drawn from the case studies. First, the case of Surinamese migrants demonstrates how weak organizational networks in destination countries discourage transnational political mobilization. It also shows how, in contrast to ‘‘labor migration,’’ sending countries that have an interest in instrumentalizing their population abroad, the post-colonial context renders transnational political participation extremely suspicious from the viewpoint of sending state authorities. Second, with the case of Turkish migrants, Mügge shows how regime transformation in a sending country creates opportunities for citizens abroad to get involved in home country politics across borders. Third, the case of Kurdish migrants in the Netherlands tells us that, when formal avenues for participation in both host country and home country politics are scarce, migrants may be tempted to engage in ‘‘below the radar’’ transnational activities. However, just as Turkey’s bid to join the EU has triggered national authorities’ interest in fostering the transnational political participation of its emigrants, it has given Kurds living abroad the leverage to lobby the EU and the Dutch government. Overall, Mügge’s book can be considered a contribution to the field of immigrant transnational political participation because it addresses some of the methodological gaps of earlier research. Examining both the sending and receiving society’s perspectives, it identifies the main variables determining the development of such ties. Doing so, she shows the way forward for future research on political transnationalism.