How Relational Publics Become Scandal Audiences: Values and the construction of scandal

Abstract

We are interested in examining the process of scandal creation through the lens of the audience. Extant work tends to address either the effects of organizational scandal, or the role of the media and social control agents in scandal creation, neglecting the audience. To address this gap, we draw on the sociological concept of the relational public to explore how individual or small group assessments become widely held social evaluations among scandal audiences. We develop a three-stage model of organizational scandal creation: first, scandal entrepreneurs and the media frame an organization’s behavior as transgressive to media consumers who react within the relational publics they constitute; next, members of those relational publics judge the act in light of their values; finally, as relational publics spread their judgment to adjacent groups, they aggregate and assemble into a scandal audience, activating the scandal. Our model adds to media-centered theories of scandal construction by highlighting the role of heterogeneous audiences and their values, building a nuanced understanding of the process of social evaluation in scandal creation.