HILLARY CLINTON's 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN in PHILADELPHIA's LATINO COMMUNITY a Disser

COMMUNICATION AND THE BODY POLITIC: HILLARY CLINTON’S 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IN PHILADELPHIA'S LATINO COMMUNITY A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Juan S. Larrosa-Fuentes May 2018 Examining Committee Members: Nancy Morris, Advisory Chair, Media and Communication Patrick Murphy, Media and Communication Brian Creech, Media and Communication Sandra L. Suárez, External Member, Political Science i ABSTRACT This dissertation contains a qualitative case study of how Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, and her staff, created communication systems to contact Latinos during the 2016 presidential campaign and how these systems operated in Northeast Philadelphia. Three research questions guided these observations: How was political communication produced, disseminated, and decoded through interpersonal, mass, and digital communication by the Democratic candidate, her Latino communication staff, and Northeast Philadelphia Latino residents during the 2016 presidential campaign? What were the functions, norms, and values that structured the political communication systems among the Democratic candidate, her Latino communication staff, and Northeast Philadelphia Latino residents? What were the power relations that informed the interactions between the Democratic candidate, her Latino communication staff, and Northeast Philadelphia Latino residents in the political communication system? The dissertation employs the Political Communication Systems Model, a toolkit to observe and theorize on political communication. Under the grounded theory umbrella, two methods were used to collect data. First, Clinton’s mediated campaign communication was monitored. Second, I worked as a volunteer in a field operations office that Clinton opened in Philadelphia and performed a participant observation. Clinton built a political communication machine to produce a campaign that used a hybrid media system. She hired a large staff to design and execute an air war (i.e., radio and TV ads and journalistic coverage), a digital campaign (i.e., distribution of information through websites, blogs, social media, newsletters and text messages), and a ground game (i.e., canvassing, phone banking, and online messaging). The Latino ii campaign was designed to promote liberal values such as globalism, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and diversity, values that shaped her economic and political proposals. The ground game had three main objectives in Northeast Philadelphia: register new voters, create strategies to persuade undecided voters to support Hillary Clinton, and organize the "Get Out the Vote" (GOTV), which consists of convincing people to get out their houses, go to the polling station, and vote. A substantial part of the dissertation focuses on describing and analyzing the ground game in Northeast Philadelphia and offers two significant findings. First, political communication systems need material infrastructures operate. Clinton built a material infrastructure to communicate with residents. This infrastructure was made, primarily, of human bodies that were able to move around the territory and use other communicative technologies smartphones, tablets, and computers. Second, human bodies were also used as symbolic devices. Clinton recruited staffers and volunteers whose bodies embodied values such as diversity, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalism. The biographies and trajectories of these individuals projected these values, because they were persons from different parts of Latin America, with diverse cultural and educational backgrounds, and with different experiences of being a U.S. citizen or resident. Finally, the dissertation offers two main contributions. On the one hand, the dissertation expands the Political Communication Systems Model and suggests that the human body is the primary material unit in political communication infrastructures. On the other, this work illustrates how qualitative research can be employed for researching political communication in general, and presidential campaigns in particular. iii Para Lupita, coautora de vida. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As a scholar, I believe that the construction of knowledge is a collective endeavor (Goldman, 2010). Therefore, this dissertation is the outcome of my effort, which is embedded and intertwined in larger epistemological systems integrated by institutions, peer scholars, and personal relations. Regarding the institutional level, I would like to thank Temple University, the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Program, the Consejo National de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), and the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). These institutions provided the economic resources to complete the doctoral program. I especially want to thank Dr. Nancy Morris, my advisor, and mentor, not only through the process of crafting the dissertation but throughout all my graduate experience in the United States. Moreover, thanks to Dr. Patrick Murphy and Dr. Brian Creech, who offered valuable insights for my research, as well as Sandra L. Suárez, the external reader of the dissertation. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Creech for suggesting the title for this dissertation. This work is also an extension of my parents’ work, Alma Fuentes Fierro and Alfredo Larrosa Haro, an anthropologist and physician, who taught me the passion for teaching and doing research. Along with them, Lupita, my wife, and Maria, my daughter, were sources of inspiration and confidence. Finally, I would like to thank all the staffers and organizers of Clinton’s campaign, as well as Northeast Philadelphia residents, who allowed me to spend time with them during the presidential elections. In the end, we all are fighting to understand and construct the democracies that will operate during the twenty-first-century. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ II ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. V LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... XI LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... XII LIST OF MAPS ............................................................................................................. XIII LIST OF SCENES ......................................................................................................... XIV CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 The Political Communication Systems Model .............................................................. 3 Research Grammar: Time, Space, and Community ...................................................... 5 Grounded Theory, Live Ethnography, and Participant Observation ............................. 6 The Historical Context of the 2016 Elections ............................................................... 8 Ground Game as a Key Strategy of Presidential Campaigns ........................................ 9 Social Science Research on Ground Game ................................................................. 11 Clinton’s Ground Game in Northeast Philadelphia ..................................................... 12 Human Bodies as Basic Material Elements of Political Communication Systems ..... 15 2. THE POLITICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS MODEL .................................... 20 Political Communication’s History as an Academic Field .......................................... 21 Political Communication Research and Electoral Campaigns .................................... 23 Mainstream Political Communication Research ......................................................... 26 The Epistemological Uniformity of Political Communication Research ...................... 26 The Methodological Homogeneity of Political Communication Research ................... 28 The Political Communication Systems Model: A Proposal ........................................ 31 vi Defining Communication and Political Communication ............................................... 32 The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Political Communication ............................. 33 Incorporating the Concept of System to the Model ....................................................... 37 A Brief Summary of the Model ..................................................................................... 41 Conclusion: The Emergence of New Perspectives on Political Communication Research ...................................................................................................................... 42 3. GROUNDING POLITICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS .................................. 44 The Origins of this Doctoral Research as a Standpoint .............................................. 44 A Powerful Political Communication Machine for Reaching Latinos ........................ 46 From a National to a Local Communication System: Latinos in Northeast Philadelphia ................................................................................................................. 52 Research Questions for Investigating a Local Political Communication System ....... 56 Grounded Theory and the Political Communication Systems Model ........................

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