Politics by Kayfabe: Professional Wrestling and the Creation of Public Opinion
POLITICS BY KAYFABE: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING AND THE CREATION OF PUBLIC OPINION WILLIAM P STODDEN North Dakota State College of Science and Concordia College and JOHN S. HANSEN Hennepin County Library1 INTRODUCTION Professional wrestling offers an excellent analogy for understanding the way politicians socially construct reality to produce changes in public opinion. In most cases, politicians will frame specific events in a way designed to elicit public support for their preferred policies or candidates. They will also use these same techniques to frame those they perceive to be “enemies” in a way that generates fear and antipathy in the population. The creation of reality and incitement to action in a mass population is one function of political propaganda, which is nearly ubiquitous in the age of mass media, big data, and the 24 hour news cycle.2 In many ways, the process of the construction of reality employed by politicians is similar to the creation of angles and storylines in professional wrestling, which has grown into a world phenomenon alongside-- and largely as a result of-- mass media. In its current manifestation, professional wrestling, now called “sports entertainment,” requires the apparatus of mass media as well as the audiences mass media generates to succeed financially. For their part, policy makers and political leaders also use the mass media. In fact, the modern mass- based political Party, which appeals to huge swaths of the population using claims and narratives resonant with the average person rather than traditional political elites would not exist without the mass media. Without widespread dissemination of news, Parties would not be able to effectively disseminate political propaganda or generate public opinion.
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