Finding the White working class in 2016
Journalistic discourses and the construction of a political identity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7513480 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brian Creech (0000-0002-0986-6842, Temple University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 201-222 |
| Publication date | 2018-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1367-5494 • E-ISSN: 1460-3551 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1367549418786413 |
| OpenAlex | W2885450598 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 39 |
This article argues that the discourses and techniques of political journalism worked to make White working class identity sensible as an assumed norm in American politics during the 2016 US presidential campaign. Throughout the campaign, many news organizations sent journalists to small towns and various Donald Trump rallies to understand what was driving a burbling resentment among his base of White working class voters, and by interrogating the explanatory and long-form reporting produced by these journalists, we can come to understand how the White working class began to cohere as a particular political subjectivity. By documenting the economic decline and social peril borne from neoliberal policies, acts of journalism substantiate the conditions that animate White working class identity and legitimate its resentments. However, that same journalism also failed to adequately deal with the consequences of policy and the way economic conditions and cultural identities reflexively constitute one another, instead focusing on the ways class- and race-based resentments formed a well of political support, constraining any sense of agency to the discursive bounds of a political campaign. This article concludes by arguing that in order to decenter the primacy of whiteness in American politics, it is incumbent upon scholars and observers alike to attend to the various cultural discourses and techniques that render it simultaneously central and invisible
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Identity (music · Journalism · Media studies · Political economy · Political science · Political subjectivity · Politics · Resentment · Social science · Sociology · White (mutation · Working class · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Gender Studies · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Political and Economic history of UK and US
Out of Whiteness
Whiteness as Property
The Dignity of Working Men
Working-Class White
Redundant Masculinities
The Politics of Resentment
Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights
All's Fair in Love and Sport
Mediated persona and political culture
Assimilation versus multiculturalism
Gucci Geishas” and Post-feminism
Beyond the pale
The idea of “the liberal media” and its roots in the civil rights movement
Wise Latina
A Look at Agenda-setting
The Handbook of Journalism Studies
Reading News as Narrative
The Post-Racial Mystique
The Politics of Conservative Elites and the “Liberal Media” Argument
Journalists are the confessors of the public', says one Foucaultian
Possessive Investment in Whiteness
Against race
The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media
When facts, truth, and reality are God-terms
Prejudice as Group Position
Reconsidering Culture and Poverty
The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race
Politics of Nature
Foucault, Gary Becker and the Critique of Neoliberalism
Post-race, post politics
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |