PhD Alumna Katie Brownell Publishes Second Book with Princeton University Press
Katie Brownell, BU Ph.D. (and current Associate Professor of History at Purdue University) has published her second book, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and The Fragmenting of America From Watergate to Fox News. Published by Princeton University Press, the book “argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today’s rampant polarization and scandal politics—the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations—from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV’s foray into presidential politics in the 1990s—took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval. 24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground.