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Harnessing the Potential of the “Demotic Turn” to Authoritarian Ends: Caller Participation and Weaponized Communication on US Conservative Talk Radio Programs

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French Perspectives on Media, Participation and Audiences

Abstract

Audience participation is a standard feature of US conservative talk radio (CTR) shows. The leading format among non-musical radio programs, CTR provides listeners with a daily opportunity to speak on air. As a radio genre that claims to be participatory, it is intended to be a forum where listeners can engage in conversation with the host. However, these shows also convey a form of authoritarian discourse, which is not only expressed discursively but reflected more specifically in the hosts’ approach to media practice, the specificity of the shows’ apparatus, and within it, in the status of the audience such as it is embodied by callers. In this chapter, Sébastien Mort analyzes how the affordances of CTR shows’ apparatus enable the hosts of nationally syndicated CTR programs to instrumentalize audience participation as part of their strategic use of “weaponized communication”, typical of authoritarian figures. Here, audience participation is instrumentalized to forge a representation of what is supposed to be an archetypal conservative, through a simulacrum of democratic exchange that the shows’ apparatus creates.

French Original Publication: Le statut du public dans le dispositif des talk-shows radiophoniques conservateurs aux États-Unis. In L. Ballarini & C. Ségur (Eds.) (2018). Devenir public. Modalités et enjeux, Paris: Mare & Martin.

Translation: Teri Jones-Villeneuve

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Limbaugh’s broadcasts have fairly consistently led the “News/Talk” format, with 15.5 million weekly listeners in early 2019 (Talkers Estimetrix, 2019), ahead of Morning Edition, the top program for National Public Radio (NPR), which captures 14.2 million listeners every week (National Public Media, 2018. Accessed: www.nationalpublicmedia.com/npr/programs/morning-edition/)—though at times, the rankings fluctuate.

  2. 2.

    Paley Center for Media. Museum of Television and Radio Seminars Series: The First Annual Radio Festival “Rush Limbaugh and the Talk Radio Revolution,” 24 October 1995; 7:30 p.m. Catalogue reference: T:40932.

  3. 3.

    “Par le biais du téléphone, l’auditeur pose des questions ou donne son avis en direct sur tel ou tel sujet.”

  4. 4.

    “Ici, l’auditeur est perçu comme un citoyen souhaitant que son opinion soit reconnue par les autres.”

  5. 5.

    “Loin d’élargir l’espace public et de participer à la démocratisation de la parole, les médias radiophoniques […] privés, à travers les émissions de type forum, instrumentalisent aujourd’hui la parole des gens […].”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre de Recherche sur les Médiations (CREM), Université de Lorraine, Metz, France

    Sébastien Mort

  2. Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Cultures Anglophones (LARCA), Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France

    Sébastien Mort

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  1. Sébastien Mort
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Correspondence to Sébastien Mort .

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  1. Centre de recherche sur les mediations (CREM), Université de Lorraine, Metz, France

    Céline Ségur

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Mort, S. (2020). Harnessing the Potential of the “Demotic Turn” to Authoritarian Ends: Caller Participation and Weaponized Communication on US Conservative Talk Radio Programs. In: Ségur, C. (eds) French Perspectives on Media, Participation and Audiences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33346-1_2

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