Capstone Prospectus

Intro

The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) is one of the largest and most popular pieces of cultural media to emerge as a podcast. The show, now exclusively available on Spotify and valued at around one hundred million dollars, averages a few million views per episode with his highest earning nearly forty-two million. The podcast is not just popular though, it is becoming influential and important. “The show was Apple Podcasts’ second-most-downloaded podcast in both 2017 and 2018. It also routinely sits near the top of Stitcher’s weekly most-popular-podcast rankings” (Peters). Since signing exclusively with Spotify the show has been ranked as the most searched for podcast on the platform as well as the most watched new podcast. It was also ranked as the most popular podcast in 2020 by Spotify which could be some of the reasoning behind the huge deal they offered to Rogan. Although the really interesting and intriguing parts of the show to me are in the discourse and communication skills that Joe possesses that keep the audience engaged in the podcast and coming back to hear or see more. Despite a career in stand-up comedy and reality television, Joe’s show is very insightful, thought-provoking, and full of discourse regarding human behavior, pop culture, socio economic issues, and many things in between. Guests on the show range from professional athletes, and high profile politicians to renowned scientists and prosperous business moguls. I’ve learned a great deal of genuinely new information and ways to think and/or communicate from aspects of the podcast that have made an impression on me and I feel it is important to acknowledge considering the draw it has brought and the good responses it's getting. One thing that strikes me about Joe Rogan is his ability to communicate, articulate, and connect with total strangers over long periods of time. His podcasts are pretty much all done in person, and usually last at least two hours long. He’s now got a few episodes that were done virtually due to the pandemic but he also moved from Los

Angeles to Austin so he can continue to meet with his guests without as many regulations as

California. It’s been a couple years since I first started listening to the show and there has barely been any moments of intermission, or disconnection, between him and his guests. And not only does Joe keep engaged in every conversation, he seems to hit a point with every guest where the conversation is unconstrained, and sincere discourse takes place. Regardless of the guest profession, race, gender, class etc. I think the people that come on his show feel comfortable with him or with what his show offers which is an opportunity for open dialogue within mass media.

His guest can come on the show and talk about whatever they like and for however long they desire, which creates an environment that is honest and understanding and able to share and amplify someone’s voice. There’s many cases of the show where a guest comes on with baggage whether it be from the past or the media. On JRE these individuals can identify themselves and have their voice heard and, at times, actual facts over rumors or opinions about them. Joe builds relationships with these people if he did not have one previously before having them on the show. Literature Review

Angelina Russo talks about the keys to building and establishing these types of relationships in social media spaces and “the question of cultural exchanges and creative connections within these existing communities” (Russo).

Russo did her studies on the commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of World War I, a process by which museums can connect with design communities to facilitate discourse on contemporary issues, in Transformations in Cultural Communication: Social Media, Cultural

Exchange, and Creative Connections. In this article she describes what she calls “design communities,” and explains how and why they connect to culture and the social issues that she’s confronting. She explains a community she calls “social design” she says, “essentially, social design is a result of informed ideas, greater awareness, larger conversations, and the desire to contribute valuable design solutions to society.” I think JRE applies to this design in its own way, it explores the ways in which we can contribute to new solutions and perspectives on society which insofar helps create them. The creative connection that is going on between Rogan and his guests foster a unique space for new ideas and perspectives to emerge and outreach to the public. “Extending these relationships and formalizing networks of design communities could encourage users to co-create new products and services in ways meaningful to them. In doing so, such connections could capture the social value of the participative web and explore ways of empowering audiences in a publicly engaged society” (Russo). Networks are established through an engaged society or audience. In The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms

Markets and Freedom the author, Yochai Benkler, talks about how people can be empowered through social networks and cultural productions. Podcasts are new pieces of media that I feel could be categorized as cultural productions. Their recent surge in popularity across streaming mediums brings questions about how they are being viewed and their impact socially. Benkler says, “a series of changes in technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge, and culture.” JRE, being one of the most popular podcasts among a very wide and growing range of options, provides its audience with these new opportunities that

Benkler mentions and insofar creates a network for its audience. This network enables a shift to happen “from the mass-mediated public sphere to a networked public sphere. This shift is also based on the increasing freedom individuals enjoy to participate in creating information and knowledge, and the possibilities it presents for a new public sphere to emerge alongside the commercial, mass-media markets” (Benkler 11).

The podcasting community is where this shift can be seen alongside the likes of cable television and paid streaming services, podcasts including JRE are at the forefront of that cultural change that is taking place. JRE’s following, similar to other of these larger podcasts audience, is part of a sort of collective identity formed through sharing characteristics and perception invoked from the show. In Chatting with Peers: Bridging Motivations of Internal Social Media Use, Online

Interaction, and Organizational Identification, “Social identity scholars used the concepts of belongingness to explain identification forming; groups provide people with a sense of belonging to a society, which becomes the fundamental motivation of human beings” (Bi & Zhang 100).

Similar to any other social groupings people belong to, we start to identify with those public’s and surrounding communities. In an article titled Cultures of Circulation: Utilizing Co-Cultures and Counterpublics in Intercultural New Media Research the authors Melanie Loehwing, and

Jeff Motter bring up some interesting points on new media technologies and how they have an affect on our socialization and expansion of communications. They say, “At home, we have come to expect an ever-evolving role that media plays in our everyday lives, anticipating an accelerating progression of the means by which emerging technologies shape nearly all elements of our daily interactions, both public and private” (Loehwing & Motter 29). And they question what this could mean for culture, do new media productions like podcasts simply host channels where existing cultures interact and communicate? Saying yes to that question implies that new media doesn’t fundamentally change or have a lasting effect on our identities or social groups.

“Destabilizing the status of culture in intercultural new media research leads us to two core concerns in communication scholarship: the role of power relations in structuring communicative practices and the construction of identity through communicative exchanges. We offer this essay as a call for interrogating the influence of power and the constitution of identity as new media users engage in virtual intercultural interaction. Namely, we are concerned with two interrelated questions: How do existing power asymmetries constrain intercultural communication in the context of new media developments? How do new media transform traditional processes of identity construction and circulation?” (Loehwing & Motter 30). These several points and questions are really good to think about in relation to my research, how or in what fashion does

JRE interpellate it’s audience? What is one's self identification or socialization motivated by?

And how do the public’s and networks we belong to affect our identity if it does at all?

Methodology

I will address these questions and the analysis of my research object through a somewhat

Marxist lense, using interpellation, constitutive rhetoric, identification, and the dynamic of publics and counterpublics as framings to add to the already present scholarly conversations surrounding my topic. Because my object is one that has not been directly studied in the publics of communicative scholars, I have had to base my research on many sources that revolve around these frameworks and media. Theorists that’s studies are most pertinent to my research are

Warner, White, and Sherlon. Their original works on social identity and behavioral theories are what I will be basing my thesis on. By showing the ways in which JRE has carved out new dimensions of media culture in the medium of podcasting, I hope to display how and in what ways the show has interpellated its audience and curated interconnected publics and counterpublics across various cultures. This research will also focus on the production of podcasting itself, its recent surge in popularity, cultural contributions, and studying the mediums they are consumed on. I have found sources that talk about language and its relation to culture and constitutive rhetoric which brought me a new way to look at my life research, “In broad terms language has become more salient and more important in the range of social processes.

The increased economic importance of language is striking. It is well known for instance that the balance of economic life has shifted increasingly from production to consumption and from manufacturing industries to service, culture and leisure industries” (Dijk 254). Which makes me think, is JRE, and podcasts that are using language and dialogue as their content for consumption vital to these publics they’ve created? And are they intentionally interpellating their following? I want to touch on a few areas of thought that question agenda setting and hegemonic discourse within JRE as well. In all I hope to bring a new perspective to this side of communicative theory and study and show how this subject matter is relevant to modern cultures.

Bibliography

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Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and

Freedom. Yale University Press, 2007.

Fairclough, Norman. Critical Language Awareness. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group,

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Loehwing , Melanie, and Jeff Motter . Cultures of Circulation: Utilizing Co-Cultures and

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