What is it about?
Discordant Democracy examine the role that sound has in influencing citizens' decision during political campaigns. The research for this text was done during the 2008 and 2016 elections and uses the two historical phenomena of Obama and Trump's elections as starting points for analysis.
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Why is it important?
This text sheds light on the role that emotion plays in elections, and more specifically the role that sound plays in emotional manipulation. The text also examines the role of sound and emotion in the rise of populism following the Great Recession.
Perspectives
Discordant Democracy represents a decade of research into sound studies and American political culture. I was personally surprised by how much overlap there was between the 2008 Obama campaign and the 2016 Trump campaign, how similar the sonic strategies were and the effect that the campaigns had on partisans (barring the violence that Trump rallies exhibited). This is, of course, an abstract argument, and the similarities and differences necessitate a nuanced engagement that is not provided in short journalism or partisan analysis.
Justin Patch
Vassar College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sonic democracy*, January 2019, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781315109671-5.
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