Bumps and Tears on the Road to the Presidency: Media Framing of Key Nonverbal Events in the 2008 Democratic Election

Abstract

Two nonverbal “events” leading up to the nomination of the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2008 election, Hillary Clinton's “tears” and Barack and Michelle Obama's “fist bump,” were the subject of news media discussion. This discourse provides a sense of the diverse ways the media framed these nonverbal cues, their communicative functions, and the social commentary implied in these framings. We found one common frame in the discourse of both events: an informative frame in which the behavior is discussed as an “authentic” reflection of the candidate. A performative frame was seen in the discourse surrounding the tears. Both of these frames speak to the challenges of emotional expression in U.S. politics, particularly for women. For the bump, an additional frame not discussed in previous literature was labeled interpretive, in which the discussion focused primarily on accessing or debating the arbitrarily derived meaning of the behavior, a relatively “safe” way of handling a potentially race-based cue.