Contemporary Considerations
Political Cash Cows: US Television Stations Remain Relevant and Lucrative Because of Political Campaigns
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dean Cummings
Television stations in the United States are required to air political ads of candidates at the lowest rates available. Issues ads from Political Action Committees (PAC) can be charged at any rate. The costs of the available issue spots rise as the inventory of available commercial spots empties. Political swing states draw PAC money to ensure they outspend opponents. The competition creates a wave of money that starts 45 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election. Local television stations in Ohio and Florida sell out their inventory with little effort. This study looks at how local TV stations wield political power by selling their ad time. An ethnographic study at WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, Florida reveals the methods and means of sales representatives to comply with government regulations.
Celebrity as Currency in Digital Democracies: The New York Times - #MeToo Social Media Campaign as a Comparative Case Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Hofmann
This study analyzes how since October 5, 2017 the New York Times has expanded its ability to influence the public agenda, first demonstrated by McCombs and Shaw in 1972, to "Agenda Setting in a 2.0 World" (Johnson 2013). It did so by exposing the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator and then co-opting the #MeToo social media campaign once victimized celebrities had turned it into an attention magnet. In comparison, the Times's investigative report by Pulitzer Prize winner Farah Stockman from October 15, 2017 about Shannon Mulcahy, a skilled blue collar worker who had survived rape by her step-father as well as domestic violence, and whose identity-providing job was outsourced to Mexico, failed to develop sufficient currency in the algorithmic structure of the multimedia marketplace. This research paper also asks whether the June 2017 termination of the Times's "Public Editor" and her substitution with a "Reader Center" editor facilitated the third-week delay of Stockman's report on the December 7 "town hall" meeting about the future of blue collar workers like Mulcahy. Such a privileging of consumer choice over citizenship would violate the tenets of deliberative democracy from James Madison's original concept to Juergen Habermas's interpretation in the context of his public sphere paradigm. It will be argued that attempts to match Trump's TV celebrity in the 2020 Presidential election with celebrity campaigns of one's own, will only further erode the remnants of a Habermasian rational-critical discourse among the electorate.
