Polling as ritual

Lipari, Lisbeth

doi:10.1093/joc/49.1.83

Cited by 10 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 5 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…Instead of bringing citizens together (Dayan and Katz, 1992;Kertzer, 1988), they nourished hostility and fueled ideological conflicts. Instead of reaffirming democratic core values and political emblems (Herbst, 1995;Hooghe and Stiers, 2016;Lipari, 1999), they were mobilised to blame pollsters, journalists, and members of the public and to undermine the symbolic foundations of the political system. What is troubling for democratic discourse about the suspicions surrounding the April television exit polls is therefore not simply that the reporting of election night can be manipulated or misused; in an era of deep polarisation and public attacks against the news media, it is the erosion of trust in democratic ritual, if not its deliberate undermining, that should worry us.…”

Section: Conclusion: the Ecosystem Of News (Dis)trust And Participatimentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of (dis)trust between the news media and their audience: The case of the April 2019 Israeli exit polls

et al. 2020

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This paper explores the dynamics of (dis)trust among experts, journalists, and audiences through the case study of an inaccurate exit poll aired on a leading Israeli television channel. It combines empirical data from the Israeli April 2019 elections with a conceptual view of exit polls as both sources of information and national rituals to address public discourse on the polls and its underlying suspicions. A multi-method approach yielded a corpus consisting of focus groups with citizens, in-depth semi-structured interviews with journalists, pollsters and experts, and qualitative textual analysis of news reports. Using inductive-qualitative analysis, we identified three types of public narratives, each casting blame for the erroneous exit poll projection on a different type of actor. The statistical and biased-media narratives tally with declining trust in the news media and assume misbehavior by pollsters and news creators respectively. The deception narrative, on the other hand, suggests that right-wing voters systematically sabotaged the exit poll projections. By extending trust beyond journalistic information, this narrative foregrounds the cultural meaning of election night rituals. Taken together, the narratives found in this study delineate (dis)trust as an interplay of active participants in the creation, reception, and interpretation of news. Our findings thus touch upon key attitudes towards both media and democracy and have implications for further studies on collective rituals and information evaluations in an era of eroding trust.

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Section: Conclusion: the Ecosystem Of News (Dis)trust And Participatimentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of (dis)trust between the news media and their audience: The case of the April 2019 Israeli exit polls

et al. 2020

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“…Scholars have developed the notion of ritual to analyse different phenomena (Ehrlich, 1996 for review), including political rituals and their function for social cohesion. These scholars questioned the media's role in sustaining the status quo, underlining rituals as inherently political (Lipari, 1999). More recent studies in this tradition often build upon Couldry's exploration of 'media rituals'.…”

Section: A Populist Spectacle News As Myths and The Ritual View Of Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between ritual and information: Three phases of Norwegian news audiences’ sense-making of the election of Donald Trump

2019

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This article investigates sense-making processes of news audiences when faced with destabilizing global events. The destabilizing event is Trump’s 2016 election win, which we study from the perspective of audiences far removed: in the Nordic region. Asking how we can understand shifts in the balance between the informational and ritual aspects of news over time, we study how journalism matters when ordinary practices are suddenly uprooted, and in the gradual return to everyday life. Based on the analysis of extensive qualitative material, we formulate three successive phases of Norwegian news audiences’ reactions to the election: annoying circus far away, world-shattering shock and regained stability. We underline not only shared experiences but also nuances which we link to differences in media use routines, levels of interests in news as well as resources for the sense-making of politics. Our findings contribute to the scrutiny of news use in everyday life and at times of political upheaval, and add an audience perspective to research on Trump and the media.

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“…Likewise, in none of the cases did the president refer to the specific percentage or numerical distribution of mail opinion, favoring vague phrases such as “my mail indicates” or “letters to the White House,” comporting with previous literature. This indistinct referencing tactic has been identified by scholars as one of the three primary utilities by which an elite may construct public opinion (Lipari 1999; Fried and Cole 2001; Hart, Jarvis, and Lim 2002). And, as noted above, this allowed the White House to appear to be in touch with public sentiment.…”

Section: Examining Nixon's Rhetoric On Mailmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opening the President's Mailbag: The Nixon Administration's Rhetorical Use of Public Opinion Mail

Rottinghaus

2008

Pres Stud Q

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In this article, I extend the empirical discussion of the instrumental value of public opinion by exploring the uses of public opinion mail to advance the political goals of the Nixon White House, in particular in their rhetorical construction of public opinion. I draw on internal archival material from the Nixon White House demonstrating the Nixon administration's desire to use public opinion mail for rhetorical purposes and combine this archival analysis with a collected data set of public presidential statements referencing public opinion mail. I find that President Richard Nixon referred to public opinion mail to demonstrate the harmony of his position with the public interest, especially on salient issues, including the Vietnam War and the wage and price freeze, and to humanize his policy positions.

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Polling as ritual

Cited by 10 publications

References 5 publications

Dynamics of (dis)trust between the news media and their audience: The case of the April 2019 Israeli exit polls

Dynamics of (dis)trust between the news media and their audience: The case of the April 2019 Israeli exit polls

Between ritual and information: Three phases of Norwegian news audiences’ sense-making of the election of Donald Trump

Opening the President's Mailbag: The Nixon Administration's Rhetorical Use of Public Opinion Mail

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