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Abstract
This project examined comedic representations of US Vice President Joe Biden to analyze persona rhetoric in a media environment filled with circulating personae, or the many roles both created by and attributed to such figures. While sometimes supportive of the politician's intended roles, we found that circulating personae can disrupt the first persona, complicate the invitations and control exerted over the second persona, propel strategic and non-strategic authorships deflecting or silencing a third persona, and provide an undertow of multiple meanings supplementing a fourth persona. Several implications are drawn, including how circulating personae may neuter roles important to political rhetoric and public culture.
Notes
1. Specifically, we searched the term “Joe Biden” and all results on websites for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, College Humor, Funny or Die, and The Onion (restricting the range of findings from July 2001 through January 2013 in our initial analysis). On Google and YouTube, we searched for “Joe Biden” and each of the subsequent terms in isolation: “Jimmy Fallon,” “Conan O'Brien,” “David Letterman,” “Jay Leno,” and “Larry King.” On YouTube, we searched for “Joe Biden” clips from Saturday Night Live. We also examined the first 60 (of 370) articles on The Huffington Post generated from the search terms “Joe Biden” and “comedy,” and have snowball sampled other links and pieces from related sources since January 2013.