Speaking of debates: A Foucaultian analysis of the notion of power in the Bush-Clinton-Perot debates 1992

Chapter One problematizes the U.S. presidential debates as important media events in the process of electing a president. It demonstrates the need for a broader critical perspective from which to analyze "media power," reviews the previous debate research in the behaviorist paradigm, and proposes Michel Foucault's power analytic to analyze the presidential debates as a specific instance of the working of power in the U.S. social political system.;Chapter Three describes the political context and discourse of metadebate to establish a foundation to describe the relations of power manifest in broadcast law and debate negotiations. Broadcasters, candidates, bipartisan commissions, and the media define the process of electing a U.S. president; in Foucault's terms, as a complex interplay of relations, a "disciplinary technique.";Chapter Four describes the candidates' discourse within particular political conditions that reveal their strategies to enhance their image and win an election. The debate formats and questions reveal the same relations established in the metadebate. The changed setting is part of the strategy, or disciplinary working of power.;Finally, Chapter Five responds to the issues raised in the previous chapters. It describes power as a concept in all areas of human social inquiry, and invites Foucault's broader power analytic of language in its cultural context. The chapter focuses on how power has been conceptualized in media studies as the capacity to shape perceptions and opinions. However, in Foucault's terms, more than the capacity to persuade and shape cognitions and idealogies, the media produce "useful and docile bodies." This chapter draws conclusions about the debates as specific techniques of "micro power" in contemporary U.S. society.;Chapter Two provides an overview of Foucault's epistemology and methodology. It serves as a background for Foucault's ideas about discourse and power. In particular, his "disciplinary techniques" will be applied to the analysis of the 1992 metadebate in Chapter Three and the debates in Chapter Four.