Paper short abstract:

Media commentators in the U.S. constitute an important parasocial nexus in a multiplex of interconnections between corporate media institutions and their audiences. This paper proposes a linguistic anthropological analysis of Glenn Beck that situates his performances within wider ecologies of knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Media commentators in the contemporary United States of America constitute an important parasocial nexus in a multiplex of interconnections between corporate media institutions and their audiences. As key sources of facts unevenly distributed along contested vectors of valid and trusted knowledge, they are imbued with the capacity to serve both as prominent animators of public culture and potent loci of political power.

Glenn Beck is a notable example of the transformative influence of media commentary, having come to prominence over the last decade as a conservative talk radio and television host. Through his production company, Mercury Radio Arts, Beck has emerged as the focal figure in an expanding and evolving mass media production enterprise, entailing internet, radio, books, magazines, speaking tours, and political rallies.

Self-styled as the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment, Beck narrates a universe in which apocalypses political, social, and economic are foretold as a matter of course. As the bearer of untold and hidden eschatological truths, this very act of narration is posited as a threat to the speaker, positioning Beck and his audience within a moral order of ideological alignment.

Whilst mass media representations make models of personhood available to many people at once, they are also produced and recycled in other moments, "shadow conversations" that stretch out representation across complex participation frameworks. This paper proposes a linguistic anthropological analysis of Glenn Beck that situates his performances within wider ecologies of knowledge. It will, in that respect, explore the erasure of participant roles fundamental to his constitution as a speaking subject embodying intentionality.