Voting Behaviour: Did Eminem Give The Voice To The People

1.0 Introduction and Problem Statement

Hip Hop originated in the streets of New York in the 70s (Rose, 1994).

It extends beyond music; it’s a cultural movement that includes graffiti, fashion, and dance (Marriot, 1990). Today we know a lot of different types of hip hop, but in the beginning it was used as an expression tool to tackle societal issues such as racism and urban poverty. (Rose, 1994; George, 1998). It is safe to say that hip hop became a very useful and powerful tool of the African-American community to express their political, social, and economical issues that they encounter on everyday basis. (Alridge & Steward, 2005).

Because of freedom and expression hip hop allows, many songs emerged that describe the reality and the issues that people encounter in their everyday life. That’s how one of the most famous hip hop songs of all time, and the song that’s definition of rebellion came into life. “Fuck Tha Police” by N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude) created a song that essentially make fun of and criticize police by using ear-piercing, cruel, and ruthless language towards them. On the other hand, there are relaxing, lighthearted songs that promote positivity, which are also regarded as a part of hip hop. This indicates that hip hop is not just worshiping materialism, using bad language, and degrading females, it a highest form of self-expression due to the fact that it does not recognize boundaries.

Hip hop has been always used as a tool of minorities and oppressed ones to express their dissatisfaction with the reality that they live in, and that’s why this type of music has been a natural enemy to politics.

The relationship between politics and hip hop has improved oved the last three decades. Legends like Chuck D and KRS One weren’t physically destroying the White House walls, but the movements they inspired changed America’s political system. Nas had a dream of ruling the world, and giving Black people the ultimate freedom. Ice Cube harshly denounced the prison and political systems that demolished his country. All of them were the heroes of that generation, who gave the voice to the people, and addressed the issues in the society. Things have changed. Rap has evolved, it has been embraced by the society. It does not fight the system from the outside, rather from within. The only difference between the hip hop artists in the 90s and today is power. Today rappers, notably Eminem, have been influential in political discourse. This was especially the case during the 2016 general elections. Eminem through his music sought to be a voice against racism and white supremacy.

This topic is worthy of study because people of all generations are exposed to music on a daily basis.

Eminem has a large fan base in the music industry, meaning his music reaches a large audience. Because of this power, he has an ability to influence people and ultimately create a social movement. This is what happened in 2016. He publicly criticized at that time candidate Donald Trump. Eminem’s upbringing gives him a unique platform. Due to the fact that Eminem grew up in Detroit as a white man surrounded by African-Americans, gave him the qualifications needed to criticize and call out Donald Trump on his racism, by which he was surrounded his whole life. Analyzing the influence Eminem had during the election provides an insight on how hip hop influence politics.

2.0 Research Question and Hypothesis

The research question for this thesis is: Did Eminem shifted the political preference of the public when it comes to 2016 elections?

Because of his sheer power, worldwide popularity, and an ability to create movements, Eminem can influence people on many levels. The aim of this research will be to discover if or did Eminem had any influence, throughout his music, on public when it comes to voting.

Eminem is one of the most popular, and biggest selling artists in the world, so it is only natural that his influence is not only present in music, but everywhere else. Due to this fact, the hypothesis for this essay will be that because of sheer presence and influence in the society, Eminem did influence the voting behavior in 2016 elections in USA.

Historical background

In order for us to fully understand why Eminem has decided to dedicate his verse to Donald Trump, we need to the timeline of his involvement in politics using his music. This want the first time Eminem decided to criticize polititans and the political system. Eventhough Eminem has been regarded as a contraversial artist, because of lyrics, throught his carrer, his BET freestyle in 2017 still managed to shock the world. His four minute freestyle was aimed directly at Presidet Trump (at that time President nominee). However, this was not the first time that Eminem criticized polititians, and the politicas system in his career. At the begining of his career, Eminem contravertial lyrics were directed towards his family or his peers in the music genre. In his fourth album, The Eminem Show, Eminem voiced his opinion politics and political correctnes, because he was accused by public that his lyrics are a bad influence on a teenagers, who were his biggest consumers at the time. However, in 2004 on his album Encore he went a step further when it comes to criticizing polititians. This time, he has choosen a dircet target, which was President Bush at the time. On that album he had a song, called Mosh, in which criticzed President Bush on his involement in Iraq war. In this song Eminem says:

“Let the President answer a higher anarchy

Strap him with an AK-47

Let him go

Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way

No more blood for oil

We got our own battles to fight on our own soil.”

In addition, in his unreleased song from the album, We As Americans, he stated:

“Fuck Money! I don’t rap for dead presidents

I’d rather see the President dead

It’s never been said, but I set precedents.”

These lyrics has been understood as a threat to security of President Bush, so Eminem was investigated by the Secret Service. Fast forward few years, in 2016 during the election campaign, Eminem released a freestyle track directed at Donald Trump, in which he said:

“Consider me a dangerous man

But you should be afraid of this dang candidate

You say Trump don’t kiss ass like a puppet

Cause he runs his campaign with his own cash for the fundin’

And that’s what you wanted?

A fuckin’ loose cannon who’s blunt with his hand on the button

Who doesn’t have to answer to no one – great idea!”

After this song, Eminem proceeded to release his BET freestyle, in which he dedicated 4 minutes addressing Donald Trump and his campaign. He stated why he thinks that Donald Trump is not suited to be a President of United States of America, which we will discuss, later on in this research. The purpose of this research is to investigate if Eminem’s involvement, through his music has any impact on publics voting behavior.

4.0 Literature review and theoretical background

The literature that is used in this research is composed of only relevant and replicable written work. The first literature that is being used as a base of this research is“ Hip-Hop Therapy: An Exploratory Study of a Rap Music Intervention with At-Risk and Delinquent Youth“ by Edgar H. Tyson, which proved that hip hop can positively influence and change at-risk and delinquent youth.

Hip Hop Therapy: An Exploratory Study of a Rap Music Intervention with At-Risk and Delinquent Youth by Edgar H. Tyson

Rap music, today, is the most widespread type of music among young people (Dyson, 1996; Fried, 1999; Rose, 1995) and it has left all other music types long way behind it.

Besides, rap music has risen above all divisions of race and financial status to wind up what is currently a multibillion dollar music industry. This article introduces the consequences of an exploratory investigation of the helpful capability of a rap music mediation in gathering work with youth. ‘Hip-Hop Therapy (HHT)’ is an inventive cooperative energy of rap music, bibliotherapy, and music treatment. A test structure with arbitrary task was utilized to think about results of youth that went to HHT sessions and youth that gone to correlation aggregate treatment sessions at a private office for in danger and reprobate youth. Subjective information are additionally exhibited to give profundity to our comprehension of the encounters of the adolescent in the HHT gathering. Since rap music has turned out to be progressively mainstream among youth, it was normal that under a particular arrangement of conditions rap music would enhance the helpful experience and results for youth. Taken together, the quantitative and subjective outcomes somewhat upheld the speculation. Suggestions for clinical practice and in addition future bearings in research are noted. For the most part, rap music has been displayed and seen contrarily by the media and the bigger society. .This examination is a case of how specialists can likewise recognize and research positive parts of rap music.

The model of voting behavior is defined in three books: Personal Influence (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), The People’s Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944), and Voting (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954). In the second book, Lazarsfeld used questionnaire, for the first time, as a technique in the analysis of Presidential elections (this technique was not used during Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt); it is a technique that was not characterize by the previous study of voting behavior (Barnes & Kaase, 1979). Lazarsfeld, who had a main interest in consumer behavior and the process of choice, tried to investigate two things in this research: effects of the media influence, how voters decide in their voting preference and how media influence that decision; and to test new methodology (Rossi, 1964). This study begins with characterizing the supporters of two biggest parties in the USA, using a sample of more than 600 participants who were interviewed seven times in the period of several months of campaign, in order to find out who are the participants who changed their opinion during the campaign, then comparing 3 groups: those who already knew for who to vote for before the campaign even began, and those who decided at the final stages of the campaign. The hypothesis of his research was that voting is an individual act, and it influenced by the voters’ personality and the media influence. The results, however, do not prove the hypothesis, saying that the media influence was not to important, and that the only thing that is a big influencer in voting behavior is social group. In the closing chapters of his book “The Political homogeneity of Social Groups” and “The Nature of Personal Influence”, he puts an emphasize on explaining these conclusions: “The significance of this area of political behavior was highlighted by the study but further investigation is necessary to establish it more firmly”(Lazarsfeld et al., 1968, p. 69).

Partisanship

The main theme of voting behavior is partisanship, which is defined as a psychological sympathy, and a lasting relationship between political party and a person, that does not need to be in the form of voting, or registration to that party:

In characterizing the relation of individual to party as a psychological identification we invoke a concept that has played an important if somewhat varied role in psychological theories of the relation of individual-to-individual or of individual to group. We use the concept here to characterize the individual’s affective orientation to an important group-object in his environment. Both reference group theory and small-group studies of influence have converged upon the attracting or repelling quality of the group as the generalized dimension most critical in defining the individual-group relationship, and it is this dimension that we will call identification (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960, p. 121).

The thought of partisanship, presented in the investigation of voting behaviour conduct by Campbell et al. (1960), was impacted by the idea of reference group (Hyman and Singer, 1968) and its similitudes with the possibility of expectant socialization presented by Merton and Kitt (1950) to characterize the circumstances where people pick a reference group to which they are not a part of and start with act as indicated by what they see as the standards of that group. As per these creators, partisanship is obtained through a socialization procedure, impacted by the qualities and dispositions of family, partners and companions, a procedure that Miller and Shanks (1996) considered like what drives subjects to relate to a religion. This passionate connection the subject to ‘their’ ideological group can be accomplished with fluctuating degrees of inclusion in a procedure comparable to what occurs with the association of people to a religion, showed in manners as various as going from non-religious to profoundly religious. In this point of view, partisanship is a certified type of social recognizable proof where “citizens have an enduring sense of what sorts of people belong to various parties and whether they identify with these social groups” (Green, Palmquist, & Schickler, 2002).

Prominently, the model likewise does not coordinate partisanship with the voter’s decision. This partition between the psychological idea of partisanship and the target idea of voting conduct is reflected in the choice of not estimating this variable from the genuine voting of a participant, however through their self-situating: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or what, lead by another question which was about their level of participation : “Would you call yourself a strong (Republican, Democrat) or a not very strong (Republican, Democrat)?”. The ones who see themselves as independed were aslo asked if they are close to any particular party: “Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican or Democratic Party?” (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960, p. 122).

In this viewpoint, partisanship is not viewed as a variable that lets us know, straightforwardly and unambiguously, which is the vote choice in elections. Campbell et al. (1960) portrayed partisanship as a perceptual channel through which the voters welcome what is ideal to the direction of his gathering and overlook or cheapen what is troublesome. Considering that political life in democracy is based on social orders is solely centered around gatherings and thinking about that the assessment of arrangement recommendations requires, by and large, information that population does not have, partisanship turns out to be then a focal variable in the political experience of the subjects being an instrument of predicting of the voters decisions and proposition.

In this perspective, partisanship is not seen as a variable that tells us directly and unambiguously which is the vote option of an elector. Campbell et al. (1960) described partisanship as a perceptual filter through which the voters appreciate that which is favorable to the orientation of his party and ignore or devalue that which is unfavorable. Taking into account that political life in democratic societies is almost exclusively focused on parties and considering that the evaluation of policy proposals requires, in most cases, knowledge and information that citizens do not have, partisanship becomes then a central variable in the political experience of the subjects functioning as an instrument of “reading” of the election and the candidates’ proposals.

Funnel of causality

This model of relations between the factors associated with the meaning of voting decision making is known as a funnel of causality. This model talks about the chain of occasions that influence vote behavior of the subjects, recognizing distal elements (financial factors and political groups) and proximal elements (issues, hopefuls, race battle, political and monetary circumstance, the administration activity, impact of companions). At the beginning of the funnel are sociological and social attributes that affect the component of this arrangement that is partisanship. Partisanship has, thus, a definitive job in assessing participants, the issues, the occurrences of the crusade that are accounted for in the media and the discussions that voters have with family and companions about the race. The outcome of this channel is vote. This plan illuminates the focal job of partisanship because of the blend of dispositional and long haul factors and as a factor directing the impact of momentary factors on electoral behavior.

To think of a funnel in this way greatly enlarges our explanatory chore, for in the ideal case we want to take measurements that refer to states not at one cross section alone, but at a great number. Each cross section contains all the elements that will successfully predict the next, and so on, until we have arrived at the final act (Campbell et al., 1960).

In spite of the fact that the model incorporates every one of these elements, it concentrates on the relationship of partisanship, participants, and issues on social variables and correspondence frameworks (Niemi & Weisberg, 2001).

6.0 Methodology

This research will try to find out and measure if Eminem continuous lobbying against Donald Trump, during the 2016 elections, had any impact on voting behavior and preference of choosing their candidate. In order to gather all the relevant data and information for this research, two methods will be used: quantitative and content analysis. Quantitative data will be gathered through online surveys. This is the case because we do not live on the territory of the USA. The online survey will be distributed strictly to the citizens of the USA, because they are the only relevant subjects for this research. In order to do so, two students form SSST, who are citizens of the USA (Almedina Memisevic and Tiffany Mae Trachsler), helped distribute the survey to their friends, who live in the USA. The participation in this survey was strictly voluntary, and the participants were assured that they will stay anonymous. The survey had 17 questions, most of them were yes or no questions. Because this whole research is inspired by Eminem BET cypher, we also need to analyze the lyrics that he used in that cypher, and also the visuals in order to understand why this cypher was so well received form the public, and whether his criticism is justified.

8.0 Reference

1. Adams, T.M. & Fuller, D.B. (2006). The words have changed but the ideology remains the same: Misogynistic lyrics in rap music. Journal of Black Studies
2. Alridge, D. P., & Stewart, J. B. (2005). Introduction: hip hop in history: past, present, and future. The Journal of African American History, 90(3), 190-195.
3. Dixon, T. L., Zhang, Y., & Conrad, K. (2009). Self-esteem, misogyny and afrocentricity: An examination of the relationship between rap music consumption and African American perceptions. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations,
4. Dyson, M.E. (1996). Between god and gangsta Rap: Bearing witness to black culture. New York: OxfordUniversityPress.
5. Fried, C. B. (1999). Who’s afraid of rap: Differential reactions to music lyrics. Journal of Applied SocialPsychology,29(4),705–721.
6. Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1994). Growing up with television: The cultivation perspective. In J. Bryant & D. Zillman (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 1741)
7. Marriot, M. (1990). Hip-hop’s hectic takeover. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 3(3), 207-216.
8. Nelson, G. (1998). Hip hop america. Penguin Group USA.
9. Rose, T. (1994) Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary america. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England