Major Research Interests
Campaign Finance Law and Electoral Politics
I have spent most of my research time thinking about campaign finance and political advertising. Much of it has been thinking about the relationship between money and political speech. I have worked to extensively track the changing nature of interpretations of what it means to have a “marketplace of ideas,” how those different ideas have shaped political organizing, and as a consequence what the public sees on their televisions.
Select Publications:
Bankrupting Democracy: Campaign Spending in a Marketplace of Ideas (forthcoming)
Federal election commission records as qualitative data: a historical network analysis approach
Microfilm archives from the FEC of all expenditures from the 1980 election
Political Advertising and Impression Management
Political advertisements can be seen as a tool for impression management, a way for individuals to try to control their public perception. However, campaign advertisements come not only from candidates, but from interest groups supporting them. Since 2010, a new form of interest group, Super PACs have been involved in the electoral process. While Super PACs are not supposed to work with candidates, many candidates do have Super PACs serving as an unofficial wing of their campaigns. As a result, where and how public perceptions of candidates are managed is delegated between official campaigns and Super PACs in a complimentary manner.
Select Publications:
Music Scenes and Political Action
My current and developing work examines the Rock Against Communism punk scene and movement. While most scholars tend to place a high emphasis on lyrics and look at scenes primarily as tools for political movements, I take an alternative approach. Instead of starting with scholarship on social movements, my analysis begins with the sociology of rock music, showing how the two overlap and develop alongside each other. While these scenes absolutely help political movements, participants within them do derive a large degree of culture and meaning from the music scene as a scene. As a result, they often use the practices affiliated with music scenes and subcultures as tools to reinforce their own ideas about race, politics, and democracy.
So far only one publication in Poetics has been published, but others are under review and are on the way.
Animals and Society
Inspired by time spent volunteering at an animal shelter as an undergrad. Animals identified as having “special needs” (animals with disabilities, amputees, illnesses, extreme behavioral problems, etc.) have a much more difficult time finding homes. So I really wanted to know who does adopt them and why? I uncover this through a series of in-depth interviews done with various pet adopters, inquiring into their motivations, experiences with animals, and humans with additional needs. What was discovered was that how people conceptualized anthropomorphism and empathy influenced their willingness to care for special needs animals.
While it has been a while since I have published on the topic, it is not one that I have lost interest in. Ideas about bringing animals and society together with past strains of research are swirling around in my head and I plan on developing a class on Animals and Society in the near future.
Select Publications:
Special-needs companion animals and those who care for them (Co-author: Keri Burchfield)