Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment | 
 enlarge | Authors: Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Joseph N. Cappella
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 201766
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 0.6
ISBN: 0195366824
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.230973
EAN: 9780195366822
ASIN: 0195366824
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
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Product Description
Rupert Murdoch's recent multibillion-dollar purchase of the Wall Street Journal made international news. Yet it is but one more chapter in an untold story: the rise of an integrated conservative media machine that all began with Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s.
Now Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella--two of the nation's foremost experts on politics and communications--offer a searching analysis of the conservative media establishment, from talk radio to Fox News to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, here is the first serious account of how the conservative media arose, what it consists of, and how it operates. To show how this influential segment of the media works, the authors examine the uproar that followed when Senator Trent Lott seemed to endorse Strom Thurmond's segregationist past. Limbaugh called the remarks "utterly indefensible," but added that a "double standard" was in play. That signaled a broad counterattack by the conservative media establishment, charging the mainstream media with hypocrisy (yet using its reports when convenient), creating a knowledge base (a set of facts or allegations for partisans to draw upon), and fostering an in-group identity. By analyzing such cases, together with survey data, Jamieson and Cappella find that Limbaugh, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages create a self-protective enclave for conservatives, shielding them from other information sources, and promoting strongly negative associations with political opponents. Limbaugh in particular, they write, fuses the roles of party leader and opinion leader in a fashion reminiscent of the nineteenth century's partisan newspaper editors.
The rise of conservative media has fundamentally changed American politics. This thoughtful study offers the most authoritative and insightful account of this revolutionary phenomenon available today.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Rush Limbaugh - The Ultimate Lipsticked Pig September 13, 2008
6 out of 24 found this review helpful
Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment
A paid shill for for the most non egalitarian, anti-American man in the media is described unemotionally and given credence where none is deserved. Rush Limbaugh and his emulators on "Conservative Talk Radio" are nothing but Fascist rubes with enviable abilities to articulate inaccurate information and policy positions as though they were, somehow, worthwhile and valuable to our citizens.
If George Bush were caught on the White House lawn having sex with a goat these shills would say he was just being kind to animals. I have seen the nation that was the envy of the world become virtually dismantled by maniacal authoritarian liars given free reign by the huge networks and sources of power that they secure.
The world scratches its head in bewildered wonderment at the dishevelment of the former freedom beacon that now has made even writing a comment such as this one an act fraught with a bit of fear of the vengeful repercussions that could ensue, if noted by the powers that permit these liars to persist in their reactionary fervor.
 Top Notch Book September 6, 2008
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
At a time when the future of the nation is at stake the authors do an excellent job of identifying the methods of the rabid right wing in America.
 Quite comprehensive and thorough July 28, 2008
3 out of 11 found this review helpful
I enjoyed reading the book. It really gave a good impression of the conservative media. Especially the parts that dealt with Rush Limbaugh hepled me lot.
Slanted packaging, but sound content July 21, 2008
40 out of 41 found this review helpful
The back-cover blurbs, title, chosen subject matter, cover art, and the use of scare quotes around terms like "liberal media" all contribute to an overwhelming but incorrect first impression: The book looks at first glance like a hand-wringing, liberal worryfest about how conservatives are ... well, talking. I'm a conservative, so I'll grant I'm a little sensitive to these things (just as liberals are sensitive to slander). However, I'm also a teacher and specialist in rhetoric, and quite interested in the rhetoric of opinion leaders like Limbaugh and Michael Moore.
So I read the book despite my initial cringe, and I have to say it's a sharp piece of analysis, fair to its subjects, balanced in its perspectives, and darned useful to those of us interested in studying or discussing the intersection of media, rhetoric, and politics. The authors approach the topic from the perspective of interested observers, rather than from a judgmental frame. They note at the start of their concluding chapter that they've probably disappointed both Left and Right readers, and I think that's a safe prediction. Unbalanced readers tend not to like balanced analysis. But I certainly appreciate it, as it's hard to come by, even when the authors are respected scholars. I'm sure I'll be citing this book in some of my future work.
The authors have, to my eye at least, accurately described the rhetorical strategies and effects of conservative, alternative media. The title alludes to the book's central conclusion, which is that these sorts of narrow-audience media use framing strategies that inoculate listeners and readers against alternative viewpoints, encouraging the audience to depend increasingly on the echo chamber while dismissing messages that seem to undermine the audience's philosophy. The authors, to their credit, note that liberal-leaning media have similar echo-chamber effects. (An aside: All media do, and not necessarily in ways that are political. For instance, print, Web, TV, and radio media often play this very same game with each other in the competition for a dwindling audience.)
The authors suggest that the effects of the emerging conservative echo chamber are neither all-beneficial, nor all-problematic, but rather mixed: On the one hand, echo chambers motivate people to participate in politics, and expose them to alternative viewpoints -- even if those viewpoints are refuted and framed at a disadvantage. The authors also see the rise of a conservative echo chamber as a kind of welcome correction to the previous era of mainstream media, in which all of the messages were similar. Now, at least, there are multiple voices.
On the other hand, the authors argue that echo chambers can be destructive when the opposing viewpoints they describe are ridiculed or subjected to ad hominem (personal) attacks, suggesting that these trends would be healthier if participants tried a bit harder to fight fair. Which brings me full circle: To date, a lot of the commentary and scholarly work on right-wing media has NOT played fair with the subject, leaning heavily on fallacy. So it is refreshing to see a piece of scholarly, constructive criticism that resists these moves, eschewing cocktail-party, partisan posturing in favor of learned analysis. I just wish the publisher, Oxford UP, had done the same when it packaged the book -- its cover material and blurbs are going to turn off a lot of readers who might otherwise have appreciated the text.
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