The Material and Mobile Dimensions of Political Rallies (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Rallies, Protests, and Mobilization

Abstract

Based on ethnographic observations of Hillary Clinton’s rallies in Philadelphia during the 2016 Presidential campaign, this paper illustrates the material and mobile dimensions in the production and reproduction of political communication systems. Two questions, grounded in literature related to geography, new mobilities, and communication studies, structure this research: 1) What and how do material things, including human bodies, structure the production and reproduction of rallies as political communication systems? and 2) Why are transportation and materiality relevant to contemporary political communication? The article develops three arguments: a) Copresent political communication needs bodies to move toward other bodies to hold interpersonal and group interactions. b) The production of a rally requires the creation of a space; this space is structured by the assemblage of material things in which human bodies stand out. c) Rallies are ephemeral and mobile media that, in the context of a presidential campaign, transport information from one place to another.

Author

• Juan Sebastian Larrosa-Fuentes, ITESO University