Bread or Circuses? Parsing Representative and Representational Democratic Discourse on U.S. Political Blogs
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis finds empirical support for Jodi Dean's theory of declining symbolic efficiency through a qualitative content analysis of discourse concerning the 2013 U.S. government shutdown on political blogs. Themes of this thesis explore reflexivity, decontextualization, and an erosion of meaning brought about by changing media technologies and practices. Humanistic analyses of media and politics by scholars such as Benkler (2006) and McChesney (1999) are contrasted with works by Gitlin (1980), Postman (1985), and Dean (2010), who see media systems operating outside human control. This study's methodology relies upon Knight and Johnson's (2011) pragmatic justification for democratic institutions. The analysis uses a system of categories to describe statements about political strategy along four dimensions: operant; method of action; operand; and the consequence of the strategy. This study identifies important distinctions between textual descriptions of nominal and instrumental strategy; it is argued that nominal discourse represents the influence of symbolic inefficiency.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Milo Taylor Anderson
Language: English
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2758135841