Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter / Edition 1

by Roderick P. Hart

Overview

Roderick P Hart's Revised Edition of Seducing America is a revealing examination of how television's format of presenting politics has changed the way viewers act, vote and feel about politics in the United States. With a rigorous blend of rhetorical and statistical research, Hart asserts that while television makes viewers feel knowledgeable, important, informed and close to the political representatives, it disguises increasing apathy and inaction as voter turnouts decrease and a general dissatisfaction with the political system is expressed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761916246
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	07/27/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Roderick P. Hart is the Liddell Professor of Communication and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books and has contributed dozens of articles to other books and academic journals. He is a Research Fellow of the International Communication Association and received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association in 1993. He has recently released a new book entitled, Campaign Talk: Why Elections Are Good for Us.

Table of Contents

Political Feelings
Feeling Intimate
The Rise of Personality Politics
Feeling Informed
The Effects of Personality Politics
Feeling Clever
The Cold Comforts of Postmodernism
Feeling Busy
The Frenzy of Establishment Politics
Feeling Important
The Temptations of Alternative Politics
Residual Feelings

Editorial Reviews

"Roderick P. Hart engages in a wide-ranging and fruitful analysis of television’s impact on American politics. Each chapter grows from an incisive, original claim. The book contains many original observations, stated in an active, compelling style. The book belongs in all academic libraries and deserves adoption in undergraduate political science and communications courses."

CHOICE

"Roderick P. Hart engages in a wide-ranging and fruitful analysis of television’s impact on American politics. Each chapter grows from an incisive, original claim. The book contains many original observations, stated in an active, compelling style. The book belongs in all academic libraries and deserves adoption in undergraduate political science and communications courses."

Choice Magazine

In this stimulating meditation, Hart, who teaches government and communications at the University of Texas, contends that more important than hand-wringing over TV's superficiality is the recognition that the medium has revolutionized politics by altering how we relate to events, encouraging viewers to ``feel good about feeling bad.'' Television has fostered personality politics, the author maintains, because it is better at presenting emotions--simple and sexy--than ideas. Coverage on an emotional level produces what he calls ``a kind of shirt-sleeve imperialism,'' in which viewers ``possess'' politicians but ignore policy. Hart cogently shows that the Rhetorical Establishment--a totemic system that concentrates on a limited number of activists as spokespeople--often distracts us from the true powers in society. Diverging from those who urge greater substance on the tube and those who suggest that viewers learn doublethink, to believe and doubt simultaneously, Hart proposes a ``New Puritanism,'' a reclaiming of civic consciousness in the home, school, church and union hall. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Argues that television has become an integral and intrusive part of our emotional lives. The author examines the reactions that people have to television and the impact that has on the political life of America. Contending that current political discourse as played out on television is at its most electorally successful when it makes people feel intimate, informed, clever, busy, and important, the author claims at the same time it leads to the current alienation that threatens to take politics away from us. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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