Conjuring Abraham, Martin, and John: Memory, Myth, and News of the Obama Presidential Campaign (Top Three Faculty Paper).

Unlike most recent presidential candidates coming from privileged, well-established roots in mainstream society, political newcomer Barack Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy broke the mold as an African-American from a single-parent family. That situation challenged journalists trying to offer a cohesive narrative of the campaign. This paper argues that when faced with unfamiliar situations, journalists turn to familiar stories drawn from collective memory and mythical narrative to facilitate news that is resonant to their culture and their media audiences.This paper presents the results of a qualitative textual analysis of American news and editorials about the Obama presidential campaign to explore the role of collective memory and mythical narrative in covering that candidate. In the case of Obama's campaign, the candidate himself introduced collective memory of endearing past presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Although journalists could have rejected those comparisons - as was the case for vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle - the feel-good memory of those past leaders and the irony of the comparisons made them journalistically useful. In addition, when Obama's acceptance speech ironically coincided with an anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic "I Have A Dream" speech, journalists introduced the racial element of collective memory that Obama himself had avoided.In all, the study found that although collective memory served as a useful guide for journalists, mythical narratives played a more subtle role because of the inevitable comparisons to those American leaders and the sacrificial hero narrative that their lives mirrored. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]