Abstract:
ABSTRACT
STEAMED? AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF THE
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
by
© Ryan Guy 2011
Master of Arts in Communication Studies
California State University, Chico
Spring 2011
The following thesis is a critical-rhetorical ethnography of the Tea Party
movement. This study follows my own lived experience of joining, assimilating, and
performing advocacy as a member of the Tea Party movement. Three research
questions were constructed to focus the study on the topics of newcomer assimilation/
socialization, the role of counterpublics in the development of movement discourses,
and the rhetorical development of the Tea Party as a social movement. Data collection
consisted of ethnographic inquiry for a period of 11 months. During this time, I engaged
in direct advocacy as a member of several west-coast regional Tea Party groups. At the
conclusion of ethnographic fieldwork, a small number of semi-structured interviews
were conducted with members of the Tea Party movement. This triangulation of
ethnographic and qualitative methodologies produced a large body of data to be studied.
The data analysis process drew on rhetorical methodologies of combining textual
fragments, discovered in the field, to invent rhetorical texts representative of the Tea
Party movement. These texts were then critiqued using an analytical framework
constructed from theoretical perspectives of organizational assimilation and
socialization, social movement rhetoric, and theories of the public sphere. Following
this analysis implications concerning the problematic nature of the Tea Party's future as
a social movement were discussed. Additionally, insights into the current theoretical
understandings of enclaved counterpublics are presented. The study concludes with a
discussion of limitations and directions for future scholarship.
