content analysis

Oh, to be a fly on the wall for this little convo. Would have killed Senator Feinstein to put out a cheese plate?

On another campaign-related note, I find it fascinating how the Obama campaign is changing political culture (perhaps, even expanding the traditional boundaries of who engages in political discourse).  “American surprise us and let a black man guide us.”

I’m an Obama guy and have been since I read a New Yorker profile of him back in 2004.  Given any one of my demographic characteristics, it’s pretty predictable (like everything in my happy, but  in-lock-step-with-a-fitted-regression-line life).   But after last night’s victory, I wanted to say a word about Senator Clinton.

Consider this: today is the 89th anniversary of Congress proposing the 19th amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote.  Imagine if Hillary Clinton had won the primary process and stood today as the victor on the anniversary of a great leap in the women’s suffrage movement.  What a beautiful, serendipitous moment it would have been to see the first female presidential nominee on such an important date on the feminist calendar.  Of course, Hillary’s campaign as is has been important and historic.  Clearly, it has inspired many women and girls across the country.

I hope and expect to see a female president in my lifetime.  I just hope it’s a woman with more political conviction and a truly progressive agenda.  Barbara Boxer, maybe?

Momentum, according to the OED, is “the quantity of motion in a moving body, now expressed as the product of its mass and its velocity” or, figuratively, “continuing vigour resulting from an initial effort or expenditure of energy.” The avalanche gains momentum as it crashes toward the terrified skier. What begins with a bit of an ice block breaking off, soon gains in both mass (picking up snow and ice as it moves) and velocity as the growing wave of icy death hurdles down the mountainside. In the physical world, it’s a simple concept.

But what of its use in social terms? Anyone who saw Kobe Bryant’s performance in the second half of their West Conference finals game last night knows intuitively what the announcers meant when they said, “The Lakers now have all the momentum” despite facing a ten point deficit (for the bookish types among you, the Lakers overcame a 20 point deficit to win against one of the best defensive teams around, the evil San Antonio Spurs). Of course, there surely was a type of physicality to that momentum: as Kobe began to hoist more shots, he sharpened his stroke, storing data in his muscle memory. But the far more significant type of momentum was social. Down by twenty, Kobe dug deep, summoning his trademark killer instinct and played with an aggressiveness that said, “There’s no effing way I’m losing this game on my home court.” His intensity and confidence spread to his teammates and they began to read each other better. Pau Gasol displayed incredible athleticism in finishing off Kobe’s lobs and dishes. My beloved Sasha Vujacic, a 24 year-old kid from Slovenia who couldn’t crack the bench last year, took gutsy three pointers. In fact, the momentum was first and foremost social; it was borne of a willed confidence, greater communication with each other, and a willingness to defer to the leadership of a player with godlike talent. And like the snowball gaining in mass and velocity, each additional sunk basket contributed to more exuberance, more confidence, and a better belief in their ability to win if they work together.

Where else in the social world can we see momentum? To be sure, we’ve heard a lot about it during the everlasting Democratic Primary Race to the point where the concept has been largely discounted. But isn’t it true that a primary win can give a candidate more confidence and contribute to the sense among campaign supporters that there’s a enthused “movement” (since that’s what everybody’s calling it) growing? Didn’t Senator Obama’s surprise victory in Iowa raise his stature in the race? Didn’t Senator Clinton’s victory in NH revitalize her campaign? While we must not confuse the effect of victories in shaping media narratives with actual momentum, perhaps the media serves as an echo chamber in which the snowball can grow.

I think it’s also possible to think about how personal relationships gain momentum. Or how an ideology can gain momentum. If I had to definite social momentum, it might be something like, the growing acceptance that a belief or hope is, in fact, true. Maybe that’s why mentions of social momentum are so closely bound to the idea of confidence.

Ideas, readers?

slow news – May 13, 2008

Clinton’s Universal Bargaining Chip

By Katharine Q. Seelye (NYT Web Only)

I try to steer clear of pure political posts on slow news, but, sweet jesus, I hope this is true.  Healthcare has been an issue where I felt great ambivalence over Senator Obama.

Two things happened in the past 24 hours that got me thinking about communication. First, the friendly folks at scatterplot posted a link to Lindsay Waters’ essay on Inside High Ed calling for greater clarity in the humanities. Second, the political world has been rocked by a speech by Barack Obama on race that goes beyond the typical tendency toward sound bites and actually proposes a nuanced and complex take on the issue. So, I’ve had several ideas bouncing around in my head about the constant balancing act between clarity and complexity in communication.

Like Waters, Jeremy seems to endorse the ideal of “plainspoken social science.” This is an old debate that Stephen K. Roney summarizes well in his article, Postmodernism and George Orwell. Essentially, he pits George Orwell’s argument for simplicity and clarity in writing (spelled out in Politics and the English Language) against the case for obfuscatory language supported by thinkers like Teddy Adorno and Judith Butler. Butler, for example, is paraphrased as saying, “Difficult ideas must necessarily be expressed in difficult language” (pg. 14). While I certainly wouldn’t want to oppress anyone by rejecting his/her right to use impenetrable language, I tend to agree with Orwell that clear expression is essential to putting ideas into practical use. Ideas that are communicated in an obtuse manner are rarely absorbed by the general public (I’m thinking of Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man in the 1960s as an exception). Because Orwell was more interested in developing ideas for the purpose of political action – rather than knowledge for knowledge’s sake – he advocated a plainspoken writing style that could be widely read.

Unfortunately, to reverse Butler’s formulation, simple writing is often associated with simple ideas. Politicians are masters of developing easily absorbed, media friendly sound bites that communicate very little meaningful substance (see, for example, any sentence ending with “… or the terrorists win”). Even at moments of crisis (maybe especially then), politicians seek to paint a black and white picture with simple answers. As James Carney wrote for Time magazine yesterday, “politicians routinely seek to clarify, diminish and then dispose of the problem. They play down the conflict, whatever it is, then attempt to cut themselves off from it and move on, hoping the media and electorate will do the same.” And this is precisely what made Barack Obama’s very long speech on race so stunning. Though he spoke in perfectly clear language, the speech he gave did not simplify the issue; it revealed it to be more complex. Carney continues:

What [politicians] don’t do is give a speech analyzing the problem and telling Americans that it’s actually more complicated than what they believed. They manifestly do not denounce the offensive comments that stirred up the trouble to begin with and then tell Americans to grow up and deal with the fact that those same remarks, however wrong and offensive, are an elemental part of who they are, and who we are.

How the public reacts to this speech is still an open question. Will people reward Obama pointing out the continuing tensions of America’s racial divide? When Obama says, “We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the O.J. trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news … Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ‘Not this time,’” will people take up that challenge? It’s probably too early to say. However, what’s obvious is that his clear, beautifully-phrased, and breathtakingly inspiring speech has the potential to affect change in much the same way JFK’s inaugural speech pushed a generation into community service. This is a power that scholar writing in recent years has lacked. Scholars like John Kenneth Galbraith have, at times, used the power of clear and inspiring language to move society and policy. But who today has that gift?

On the other hand, maybe social scientists tend to see their obscure and expert language as way of protecting their supposed objectivity. It’s possible that our often incomprehensible sentences and extensive use of the passive voice reflect our desire to appear as scientists and not radicals or “policy entrepreneurs” (as Paul Krugman referred to Galbraith in Peddling Prosperity). To me, this practice seems wrongheaded. As Marx famously wrote, “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” To do so, we’re going to need some nice lucid writing, Obama-style.

I’ve decided to start a new feature here: the sunday reads. Growing up (and in my own family today), Sunday has always meant bagels and the Sunday New York Times.  It’s a time to sit back and dedicate some time to learning about the world around us. From the Week in Review (which as a pre-literate child I thought was the “Weekend Review”) to the Magazine to Sunday Styles to my beloved Frank Rich, the Sunday Times has much to offer.

In recent years, I’ve discovered that media does exist outside the Times. So, in the sunday reads each week, I will pick out a few key articles that I found significant this Sunday. Apologizes in advance if I end up linking to the entire Week in Review. Here are the inaugural links:

Postfeminism and Other Fairy Tales by Kate Zernike (NYT) – a good story on what appears to be season of growing consciousness about gender.

Five Years by John F. Burns (NYT) – Burns’ broad and inspired look back on our five years (!) in Iraq.

Republicans See Storm Clouds Gathering by Jonathan Weisman (WP) – a discussion of the poor outlook for the GOP this fall. I read this with great glee.

On My Faith and My Church by Barack Obama (Huffington Post) – Senator Obama clears the air about his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (See also: The Fox News crew deliberately manipulates the situation an interview with Obama).

Annals of War: Exposure by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris (The New Yorker) – The story of Specialist Sabrina Harman, the woman who took the notorious pictures at Abu Graib, gives a new look behind the scenes at AG, told partially through her letters. Written by one of the best journalists around and the documentary filmmaker behind The Fog of War.

Red Baron recast as a German hero by David Smith (The Observer (UK)) – I’ve been interested for a while in the way Germans continue to process their horrific acts during WWII. A new $28 million movie (a lot of money for German films) breaks a taboo by focusing on Manfred von Richthofen, “The Red Baron,” and depicts him as “brilliant and sensitive hero.”

Cuban Players Fled Their Team for an Uncertain Future by Katie Thomas (NYT) – for the non-soccer fans out there, North and Central American national teams are currently competing in their Olympic qualifying tournament (only players under 23 are eligible to play, so no Landon Donovan). As usual, several players have defected from the Cuban team, seeking asylum and better futures in the U.S. This article looks at their hopes and chances for the future.

If any of these stories were interesting to you, please return the favor and leave a link to a good article in the comments!

I love politics. If my cable provider offered a Politics All-League Pass, I’d surely be the first to sign up. The amount of time I can spend watching Chris Matthews, Wolf Blizter, and the rest of the mindless media gang, while reading endless blogs and articles about politics far surpasses that of any of my friends or families. Given this interest, it has been difficult not to mention politics here, but I don’t see this blog as being about whether I like Obama or Hillary. So, I’ve been avoiding it.

However, there is an genuinely sociological issue raised by the campaign that I’d like to discuss. In the past several weeks, the Clinton campaign has been very successful in selling the storyline that the press has been harder on her and, perhaps, even want to see Obama win. Though this idea has gained substantial currency (thanks a lot, SNL), I’m not buying it for two seconds. Here’s why: plenty of research has shown that the American press corps is a highly professionalized group committed to the idea of objectivity, something that is heavily emphasized in J-schools (see Michael Schudson on the American objectivity norm). As Schudson writes in “The objectivity norm in American journalism,”

Journalists grew self-conscious about the manipulability of information in the propaganda age. They felt a need to close ranks and assert their collective integrity in the face of their close encounter with the publicity agents’ unembarrassed effort to use information (or misinformation) to promote special interests.

Many sociologists and former journalists, among them Herb Gans, Mark Fishman, and Leon Sigal, have documented journalists’ almost ideological commitment to objectivity and “common sense” thinking. No insult is greater in a newsroom than to insinuate that a journalist has a political preference. As NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams often says with great pride, “I don’t do opinions.”

That said, journalists are under great pressure to produce new “news pegs.” For example, when one has a primary race where nothing new is happening for weeks at a time, the slightest development can be overblown into a major event. Thus, during a spell in the campaign when little was happening, the Clinton campaign (masters of media manipulation, see The War Room (1993)) was able to provide reporters with a new and interesting storyline: that the press is in love with Obama. The story also offered the added bonus of being able to engage in self-criticism (as anyone who reads The Times‘ public editor’s column knows the press loves to do).

In the past week, the press has fancied the idea that Clinton’s negative attacks against Obama have won her some much-needed momentum (whatever that means). And while it seems likely that he came out of last night’s Ohio-Texas Two-Step with more delegates, the storyline that Obama is winning has grown stale. So, the press will begin to run with the classic Clinton “comeback kid” story.

It’s just important to remember that these stories have far less to do with reality and far more with the nature of news routines.