Sex, Power, and Cover-Ups: Defining Political Scandal as American Pop Culture

Nyhan (2015) has pointed to the lack of a good definition of political scandal, that many are too focused on evidence and not on the larger picture of context. He attempts to bring together some prior definitions to fit a study of the effects of media coverage on scandal. What is still missing, however, is a definition of scandal that applies more broadly to its inclusion in what Thompson (2008) calls ―the larger audience‖ beyond more traditional media coverage. How do we account for why some scandals capture the imagination of that larger audience better than others? Further, what makes some scandals a better fit for more contemporary, non-traditional forms of media? This paper is a first step at trying to find that definition and how it leads to the "pop culturization" of scandal.