Public characters: the politics of reputation and blame

Abstract

Stories carry ideas, values, and concepts that help us to build and share meaning. Parents and teachers worldwide use their cultural references to heroism and villainy to teach children the morality to be either ordinary or extraordinary members of their community. Characters are the central element of storytelling, and their intentions, strengths, and weaknesses mobilize our thoughts and feelings toward them. While characters are the building blocks of stories, actions are the building blocks of character. In Public characters: The politics of reputation and blame (Oxford Scholarship Online, 2020), James Jasper, Michael P. Young, and Elke Zuern focus on the intentional character work moving political disputes. Their perspective offers an insightful starting point for scholars aspiring to analyze how groups committed to distinct political agendas have been using character work as an efficient tool to guide public opinion in diverse directions. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter encourage their users to cultivate a virtual public persona and use it to debate what should be done in their neighborhoods, cities, and countries. Ordinary people and political leaders have been applying these digital tools to influence and cajole their audiences about whom to vote for, what to wear, and which activist causes to join. Aiming to explain how cultural meanings become part of the political contest, Jasper and colleagues move the spotlight to the intentional and agentive action of picturing one’s adversaries as evil, weak, and incompetent while presenting oneself as the perfect antithesis. In a nutshell, the question guiding the book is: how can one convince others to support political positions without paying or coercing them? The authors conceive of the political field as an arena where interaction and persuasion are crucial and underline the relevance of understanding how diverse players do intentional and agentive character work to get support for their positions. The premise is simple: “As long as people talk to one another, recruit allies, endeavor to grab attention . . . and endorse a course of action over others . . . we suspect they will use public characters” (p. 255).