Limbaugh's Loose Lips: Rush Limbaugh's Image Repair after the Sandra Fluke Controversy

Radio personality Rush Limbaugh sparked a firestorm in February 2012 after calling Georgetown University law student, Sandra Fluke, a “slut” for her testimony before congress advocating mandated contraceptive coverage. After a 3-day tirade aimed at Fluke, and in the face of fleeing sponsors and heightened criticism, Limbaugh issued a formal apology to Fluke. This article applies Image Repair Theory to Limbaugh's discourse including both his initial defensive remarks and his formal apology. Although Limbaugh utilized a combination of image repair strategies, in focusing solely on the words he used to describe Fluke, this analysis finds his defense largely ineffective.     

Excellence in Broadcasting? Rush Limbaugh and Image Repair in the Sandra Fluke Controversy

Rush Limbaugh is one of American radio's most successful performers, but that success has always come with controversy. In 2012, Limbaugh's comments about college student Sandra Fluke caused a public outcry and dozens of advertisers to suspend or end their participation on his daily program. This research, employing Benoit's image repair theory, examined how Limbaugh tried to deal with the fallout from his comments. The study found Limbaugh employed multiple strategies, including denial (shifting blame), evading responsibility (good intentions, provocation), reducing offensiveness (minimization, attacking one's accusers, transcendence) and mortification.     

Propaganda and rush Limbaugh: Is the label the last word?

A content analysis measured the performance of much‐labeled talk show host Rush Limbaugh against traditional and modem standards of propaganda. A month of Limbaugh's syndicated radio program was recorded off air. The tapes were randomly sampled for topic segments defined as the units of analysis. Trained coders working in pairs rated each sampled segment on 40 questions, grouped to test seven hypotheses about Rush Limbaugh's performance, and t‐tests were used to test the variance of scores from the neutral median. Although Limbaugh was not found to use the majority of traditional and modem propaganda techniques or to conceal the source and purpose of the ideas he presented, he was found to have a political agenda, to espouse that agenda openly, and to employ a minority of propaganda techniques. The findings support the notion that analysis of the message source, individual techniques of presentation, and the totality of the message may be more important to effective understanding than the assigning of labels.     

Who Listens to Rush Limbaugh's Radio Program and the Relationship Between Listening to Limbaugh and Knowledge of Public Affairs, 1994–2006

What factors predict listening to Limbaugh's program? Previous studies, many more than a decade old, analyze his audience at one or two data-points. This study differs from earlier studies of Limbaugh's audience in two ways: (1) the data come from six Times Mirror/Pew Research Center polls between July, 1994 and April–May, 2006, and (2) the paper focuses on the relationship between listening to Limbaugh and knowledge of public affairs. Conservative Republicans are in his audience, but educational attainment, family income, and race do not predict who listens. Listening to Limbaugh is significantly correlated with public affairs information.     

“He sounded like a vile,disgusting pervert …” An Analysis of Persuasive Attacks on Rush Limbaugh During the Sandra Fluke Controversy

This article examines the persuasive attacks made against Rush Limbaugh after his insults of Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke. The persuasive attacks against Limbaugh attempted to increase perceptions of his responsibility for the acts, but the majority worked to increase the perceived offensiveness of his acts. The most successful attacks extended Limbaugh's attacks to the audience, pointed out Limbaugh's own inconsistencies, applied pejorative labels to Limbaugh's words, and linked Limbaugh to the positions and ideologies of the Republican Party. The analysis found that the attacks were successful in the short-run, but less so in the long-term.     

Johnson,Phylis. (2009). KJLH-FM and the Los Angeles Riots of 1992: Compton's Neighborhood Station in the Aftermath of the Rodney King Verdict

When Rush Limbaugh made his now famous remarks about Sandra Fluke's Congressional testimony he set off a social media firestorm. The ensuing backlash cost Limbaugh many prominent advertisers and damaged his public image. In this study, we examine the characteristics that motivated some to engage in the social media conversation while others remained on the sidelines. We find that political information efficacy, or confidence that one has the knowledge and skills necessary to participate, dictate political engagement online. We discuss the implications of this finding for radio, communication and media scholars, and healthy democratic deliberation among young Americans.     

Cocoon Minorities: Understanding Rush Limbaugh's Co-option of the Rhetorical Strategies of the Disenfranchised Position Through Homological Analysis

Conceptualizing minority social and political groups calls for careful consideration of power, prestige, and numerical systems. However, when members of empowered groups self-identify as disenfranchised, they create unique rhetorical situations. Through homological analysis of the rhetorical tactics of Rush Limbaugh matched with an analysis of Sandra Fluke's rhetorical strategies, we assert that subtle co-option of communication tactics poses larger questions about self-identification of individuals as minority members within social and political systems.     

Audio: The Movie [DVD]. York,PA: Tracer Technologies, 2006

NPR analyst Juan Williams appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and said that he gets “worried” and “nervous” when he sees people in Muslim dress on airplanes. Two days later NPR fired Williams and the day after that Williams issued a serious accusation against NPR: “I was fired for telling the truth.” Criticism of NPR mounted—arising particularly from conservative commentators—and CEO Vivian Schiller disseminated a statement defending her organization. This essay applies the theory of image repair discourse to NPR's CEO Vivian Schiller's apology for firing Williams. Two accusations were in play and they prompted two distinct defenses: Her reaction to accusations that NPR had not followed appropriate procedures for termination Williams employed the strategies of mortification and corrective action and her defense of the firing itself used transcendence, bolstering, and attack accuser. This essay evaluates this defense as a poor example of image repair.     

Failure of apology in American politics: Nixon on Watergate

This article is concerned with the way apologetics aids politicians in maintaining their authority. Using political systems theory, it focuses upon the three types of legitimacies of a political office holder: structural, ideological, and personal. Application of this theory is made to Nixon's 1973 Watergate apologies in an attempt to discover why, in that instance, apology failed.     

Asian-Japanese: State Apology,National Ethos,and the “Comfort Women” Reparations Debate in Japan

Recent scholarship on apology has shifted its critical emphasis from the juridical use of apology as a means of self-defense to the moral value of apology as integral to specific reconciliation processes. This article examines the “comfort women” reparations debate in Japan in the 1990s as symptomatic of this change in how we think about apology and reparations. It illustrates how “comfort women” reparation lawsuits disrupted the symbolic economy of political apology in an inter-Asian political context and, thus, transformed the rhetorical force of apology from a past-oriented to a future-oriented technology of care.     

Toward a Theory of Simulated Atonement: A Case Study of President George W. Bush's Response to the Abu Ghraib Torture Scandal

In response to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, President Bush delivered an apology that was widely criticized by domestic and international audiences. Nevertheless, the apology succeeded in allowing the President to stop the momentum of negative public opinion following news of the crimes, and to avoid accountability for his role in the crisis. In this essay, I argue that Bush's success stemmed partly from his use of a special subgenre of apologia, simulated atonement. After explaining the strategy in detail, I describe some of the conditions in which it will likely be effective and apply the theory to Bush's statements.     

Advocating for controversial issues: The effect of activism on compliance‐gaining strategy likelihood of use

Previous research has demonstrated that compliance‐gaining strategies can he arrayed on an unidimensional continuum, anchored by positive, pro‐social strategies and negative, antisocial strategies (Hunter & Boster, 1987; Rolojf & Barnicott, 1978, 1979). Individual differences, including argumentativeness and verbal aggression (Boster & Levine, 1988), have been shown to affect one's ethical threshold. This ethical threshold is consistent with a Guttman simplex and determines both how many, as well as how antisocial, compliance‐gaining strategies individuals may consider using. Activists, who are highly involved and committed to their cause and who tend to be less verbally aggressive and more argumentative than the general public (Campo, 1999), are likely to have a lower threshold and to use more strategies. This study examines to what extent activism predicts one's ethical threshold, when controlling for the known effects of argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, and sex. Participants (N = 454) at two separate universities completed a repeated measures questionnaire that asked them to indicate their likelihood of use of 25 separate compliance‐gaining strategies. Based on respondents’ likelihood of use of these 25 strategies, the data were consistent with a Guttman simplex. A multiple regression model was tested, and indicated that one's ethical threshold is directly predicted by level of activism and verbal aggressiveness. Sex and argumentativeness were not found to be significant predictors in this revised model. In addition, activists used more strategies than non‐activists. Implications for advancing research related to activism and compliance‐gaining strategy selection are discussed.     

The Texas professoriate and public political discourse before and after 9/11

Robert Jensen's critique of the participation of academic intellectuals in Texas in public political discourse after the 9/11 terrorist attacks underestimates what professors have done to inform a politically apathetic public about warfare, American foreign policy, civil liberties, and cultural and humanitarian issues. Jensen undervalues non‐confrontational political strategies and broader forms of intellectual political engagement. Confrontational strategies mobilize citizens inclined to activism, but less overtly political strategies invite larger numbers of citizens to think seriously about politics. Jensen's locally famous post‐9/11 Houston Chronicle editorial is analyzed as rhetorically egocentric and alienating, and ultimately counter‐productive in the post‐9/11 political environment.     

Inoculation to resist attacks

The present study tested inoculation theory in international context. Core inoculation concepts and variables were examine, especially focusing on relationships among inoculation treatments, issue involvement, perceived threat, resistance to counter-attitudinal attack, attitudinal confidence, and change of attitude.

A two-wave telephone survey of 206 randomly sampled citizens was conducted in Taiwan. The method of field experiment in a context of the formation of public opinion regarding Taiwan's political future was performed. Results from the panel data supported major hypotheses of this study. Inoculation strategies elevated people's resistance to attitude change. People who identified themselves with higher party identification were more resistant to counter-attitudinal political attacks. In addition, people who received an inoculation pretreatment, as compared to those who did not, grew more confident in their attitudes over time. A partial support data also indicated that higher involved participants tended to be more resistant to counter-attitudinal messages. This study has provided international evidence for the robust inoculation theory and related strategies.     

Primacy of Broadcast News: A Mediation Analysis of Recall,Attitudes, and Voting Intentions

This study examines how the order and proportion of scene valence within a television news story influence viewers' processing of political information. The results of the study, based on structural equation modeling and Sobel's mediation analysis, suggest that, in a news story about a political candidate, positive information on the candidate is recalled better if he or she is praised at the beginning of the story and then criticized at the end than if he or she is criticized first and praised later. In addition, there was a strong proportion effect. Stories with a high proportion of positive scenes were more likely to increase the participant's recall of positive information and induce his or her favorable attitudes and voting intentions than those with a low proportion of positive scenes.     

From Coughlin to contemporary talk radio: Fallacies & propaganda in American populist radio

Talk radio has evolved into the town meeting of the 1990s. Talk radio's success comes from a combination of powerful personalities, audience involvement, and propagandistic appeals. Talk radio has become so powerful as to prompt the president of the United States to denounce many of its practitioners. Radio listeners need to understand how public figures use the media to manipulate the airwaves and their messages to influence the masses. This paper critically examines conservative talk radio figures using Father Charles Coughlin, the famous “radio priest” of the Shrine of the Little Flower, as the locus of comparison. The authors analyze the radio discourse of Coughlin, contemporary national figures such as Rush Limbaugh, and a Detroit‐area commentator, Mark Scott. Traditional propaganda analysis facilitates understanding of the rhetorical force of talk radio and enables the public to increase their awareness of and ability to deal with propaganda.     

Corporate Crisis Communication: Examining the Interplay of Reputation and Crisis Response Strategies

This experiment study used a 2 × 3 between-subjects design to assess two factors in crisis communication and reputation management—prior corporate reputation (good and bad) and crisis response strategies (apology, sympathy, and compensation)—on an organization facing high crisis responsibility. Results indicate that stakeholders prefer apology to compensation response strategies. Organizations with a prior good reputation have better postcrisis reviews that those with a prior bad reputation. Crisis managers facing crises that generate high attribution of crisis responsibility and anger are advised to rely on apology rather than compensation strategy. It would also be advantageous for an organization with prior good reputation to highlight its past achievements when responding to a crisis.     

Politics and Advocacy: The Role of Networking in Selling the Library to Your Community

SUMMARY

Current research conducted by the Information Use Management and Policy Institute, Florida State University, identifies the characteristics of the successfully networked public library (SNPL) and in particular explores the impact of technology on both library advocacy and networking in the political system. This paper identifies the factors that are critical to a public library's success in advocacy, community support, government relations, and ultimately the perceived importance of the library in the community. This perspective on the SNPL is reinforced by the examination of Cuyahoga County Public Library's program to use the strategies of the SNPL.     

The role of government information officers

In most countries, a key figure in the provision of public information at the central government level is the government information officer (GIO). These individuals may be known as spokespersons, press officers, press attachés, public affairs officers, or public information officers. A GIO contributes to public understanding of government policies and raises awareness of the roles of decision makers and purview of state institutions, the availability of social services, noteworthy trends, and risks to public health and safety. In Central and Eastern Europe, a GIO's responsibilities typically include: monitoring media coverage of public affairs; briefing and advising political officials; managing media relations; providing information directly to the public; sharing information across the administration; formulating communication strategies and campaigns; and researching and assessing public opinion. Because of the region's communist heritage, GIOs in Central and Eastern Europe confront a number of special challenges, starting with poorly performing public administrations. Other problems include immature media, secrecy and political influence, and a lack of training and skills. However, as democratic, market, and media practices in Central and Eastern Europe come to resemble those in Western Europe, the activities and attitudes of GIOs in the former region are becoming more like their counterparts in the latter.