The Affective Flows of Financial News Media

Abstract

Abstract At the start of the 21st century, the financial turn and the affective turn swept through critical cultural studies. The former recognized how society was being shaped by financialization—essentially the expansion of securities markets and market logics to all areas of daily life (Martin 2002). In order to understand the impact of finance capitalism’s incursion into private and social life, scholars including Brian Massumi and Lauren Berlant turned towards affect, which refers to the flow of sensations within and between bodies. At the same time, financial news media shifted to focus primarily on market movement, often replacing contextual analysis in the process. Drawing from media studies, theories and histories of financialization, affect theory, and cultural studies, my dissertation examines the intersection of these sociohistoric and contextual phenomena. I evaluate financial news media across both broadcast and print platforms: The Closing Bell (CNBC), Marketplace (American Public Media), and The Wall Street Journal as case studies for theorizing how financial news media operates as both a reflection of and a technology of financialization. My dissertation does so by situating financial news media within the context of neoliberal regulatory and ideological change that affected both the expansion of finance capital and changes in the media industry. In addition, I undertake close readings to evaluate the genre-specific aesthetics and the definitional forms of each text in order to understand how they interact with market logics. In the process I have discovered a common focus on incremental market movement across my case studies. These aesthetic forms may be considered affective by focusing on movement as productive and change-worthy (Massumi 2002). Likewise, while each of my dissertation texts imagines a different investing audience based upon their responsiveness and involvement in the market, the demographics comprise the educated and financially elite. Therefore, my project evaluates how media communicates engagement with the market as exclusive and hegemonic.