Keeping warm cookies: Cultural discourses of fun talk in public participation

ABSTRACT

Declining rates of public participation in the United States of America have raised questions about the sustainability and effectiveness of U.S. democracy. Some scholars have called for making democracy fun through the use of game design to make public participation more accessible. Using cultural discourse analysis, this study explores the locally situated communication practices of a civil society organization called Warm Cookies of the Revolution that seeks to (re)imagine U.S. democracy by making public participation fun. The research employs ‘fun talk’ – a specific communication practice within public participation – as an analytical unit and finds that fun talk served as a discursive hub of emotion with radiants of meaning connected to being, acting, and relating. In contrast to those who have argued fun democratic practices should employ game design to improve public administration, participants understood fun talk as a way to introduce them to civic affairs, form relationships with neighbours, and take action to improve their communities. The article discusses implications for theories of emotion and affect in civil society scholarship.

KEYWORDS:

• Fun
• affect
• emotion
• public participation
• democracy

Acknowledgement

A prior version of this manuscript was presented at the 2019 International Communication Association annual conference. I would like to thank Dr. David Boromisza-Habashi, Nathan Schneider, Evan Weissman, and Carly Bachman for their input and support of this research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).