By Alaina Hobden
It has been nearly a full year since the first stay-at-home order due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Americans are on their couches and in front of their television screens more than ever. This, in combination with the high-stakes 2020 presidential election, has only strengthened the importance of television as a platform for social discourse and activism, a UC Santa Barbara audience was told last week.
Continuing its winter 2021 series “Media, Technology, and Politics Under Pressure,” the Carsey-Wolf Center at UCSB hosted a virtual roundtable discussion titled Television in the Age of Pandemic. The panel included media experts from UC Irvine, CUNY Staten Island, Cornell, and University of Alabama.
The group focused first on the role of sports media during a pandemic and a politically contentious era. Victoria Johnson of UC Irvine said sports media has become a sphere that initiates civil discourse, despite protests to “keep politics out of it.”
“The last 20 years in particular has led sports entities to be seen as civic entities, to be seen as public servants,” said Johnson, a professor of film and media studies as well as African American studies.
UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center hosted a virtual roundtable discussion titled Television in the Age of Pandemic. The panel included media experts Victoria Johnson from UC Irvine (top right), Reece Peck from CUNY Staten Island (top middle), Samantha Sheppard from Cornell (bottom right), and Kristen Warner from the University of Alabama (bottom left). Carsey-Wof director Patrice Petro (top left), moderated the talk.
Cornell’s Samantha Sheppard said athletes are not only taking control of the narrative and discourse, but taking control of television. Think Colin Kaepernick, Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, and more. Look at all the NFL stadiums turned into COVID testing or vaccination sites, she said, and the NBA stadiums opening voter registration sites. Sports media has played an extremely large role in publicizing these social issues as they continue to arise. For example, ESPN has had to stop games and then have a conversation about why. And in the WNBA players wore jerseys to a game with painted bullet wounds on the back.
“Everyone is righteously upset. And finally we're getting actual real commentary about why we have the words on the court, why this is happening,” said Sheppard, who teaches cinema and media studies in Cornell’s department of performing and media arts. “Emotions are hitting the cultural moment in that particular kind of way.”
It’s impossible to separate the onset of the pandemic from the tumultuous political period created by the 2020 presidential election, said Reece Peck, a professor in the department of media culture at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.
“Civic institutions being replaced by sports, I would say that’s happened to our political parties,” Peck said. “Media channels and networks have usurped the traditional party roles of candidate selection and the various party functions.”
Television, both in traditional channels such as Fox News or CNN as well as newer mediums such as Youtube, has heavily contributed to increasing political radicalization, he said. Peck, who studies political content on Youtube, said the social media site’s algorithm leads certain viewers down a “rabbit hole of far-right propaganda and conspiracy theories,” only increasing political polarization.
Perhaps the most unpredictable emergence of political activism comes through reality television and the connection viewers feel to the celebrities they see on television, the Carsey-Wolf audience heard.
For some fan groups, made up of Black women in particular, Breonna Taylor’s death is the centerpiece of their activism, said Kristen Warner, who teaches in the department of journalism and creative media at the University of Alabama. She also cited how actress Portia Williams spoke out about Black rights and forced the reality television sector to have a conversation about it.
“All of this fan labor is a kind of activism that I think you can see break off into various components,” Warner said. “Like the Breonna Taylor group, and Porsha Williams from Real Housewives of Atlanta becoming a part of this activism and queuing reality television to give a damn about these particular things.”
To listen to the entire discussion and learn more about the speakers, click here.
Alaina Hobden is a third year Political Science and Sociology major. She wrote this article for her Writing Program class Journalism for Web and Social Media.