The Spectacle of Expertise : Why Financial Analysts Perform in the Media

Financial experts have become ubiquitous on television, radio, and social media. They provide investment advice, interpret market movements, and explain the implications of political events, wielding a great deal of power and influence through their media presence. How do these experts acquire their authority, and what makes displays of financial expertise persuasive to their audiences? Alex Preda provides an ethnographic exploration of how financial expertise is performed and produced in the media, analyzing its features and how audiences react to it. He examines how analysts, anchors, and producers collaborate in manufacturing financial talk that circulates around the world. Preda emphasizes the significance of talk--as opposed to the written word--in finance, as the fabric of many transactions and a means of capturing capital. Analysts and media figures understand financial talk as requiring a skill set distinct from conducting research or representing facts. Preda demonstrates that analysts and media professionals deploy expertise when they engage with audiences in ways that make it difficult to contest the claims conveyed in their talk. The Spectacle of Expertise is based on close observations of TV and radio studios in Hong Kong, a global financial center and a crucial gateway to China, including interviews with audience members and financial analysts who appear as regular guests. It offers new and global perspectives on the relationship between financial expertise and the media, the making of public-expert talk, and how expertise is used to legitimize financialization. "The permanent presence of experts in the media has become ingrained in our everyday lives. Expertise is ubiquitous on TV, radio, and social media. It ranges from highly specialized and technical knowledge of the natural and social world to mundane aspects of life like our household clutter. This is particularly acute with regards to economic expertise. A small minority of people have expertise in financial economics - though everyone experiences the effects of the financialization of nearly all aspects of life - and through this knowledge and media presence, they wield a great deal of power through providing financial advice, interpreting market movements, and explaining the financial implications of political events. Most of what nonexperts think they know about financial markets comes not from their direct experience but through the media. The Spectacle of Expertise is an ethnographic exploration of how financial expertise is manufactured in collaboration between financial analysts, producers, anchors, and camera directors on TV, radio, and the internet. Alex Preda takes the reader into the world of trade fairs and investor conferences in the UK and the US, and TV and radio studios in Hong Kong. He shows how these settings deploy Goffmanian forms of talk of spectacle and games to manufacture and display expertise. Preda explains these two concepts, demonstrates the role that technology plays in these processes, shows what we expect of experts and how expert talk is created, and considers the relationship between talk and truth. In sum, the book explains the power of expertise to shape our understanding of important issues and reactions to them"-- Provided by publisher