WealthTalks

Why does the public oppose wealth inequality but not support measures to change the distribution of wealth? WealthTalks offers a novel perspective on the production and reproduction of wealth by examining how ordinary citizens discuss wealth and inequality in everyday conversations. We assume that everyday talk reproduces grand narratives of meritocracy and is, thus, prone to make the accumulation of wealth seem desirable and wealth inequality unavoidable.

WealthTalks will describe the prevalence, topics, frames, and sequences of arguments of wealth and inequality in online and offline conversations in five countries: Botswana, Brazil, South Africa, Germany and the US. Subsequently, we examine how the form and content of these conversations varies across individuals, situations, and the larger social context. Our country cases allow us to study how conversations on wealth and inequality differ between the Global South and Global North, and vary with the salience of race in the national discourse on wealth inequality. In the final step, we test how the nature, form, and sequence of conversations influence people’s perceptions of inequality and their attitudes towards wealth redistribution.

WealthTalks answers its research questions through two lanes of empirical work. First, we produce a large corpus of transcripts of everyday conversations on wealth and inequality in the five countries. Towards this aim, we collect data from debates in social media, organize a series of deliberative focus groups, and run moderated dialogues in public places. These data allow us to study in depth everyday talk as it occurs in natural settings and as it is conditioned by the situational context. Subsequently, drawing on the research insights so generated, we will run iterative rounds of online experiments in which we test how varying frames and argument sequences affect people’s beliefs and attitudes about wealth inequality and redistribution.

WealthTalks’ transformative ambition is to enable citizens to deliberate about socially acceptable levels of wealth inequality and conditions for equality. Identifying the discursive patterns that naturalize wealth inequality is the first step toward developing counter-frames and rhetorical interventions to empower citizens to confront wealth inequality. As part of the research, WealthTalks invites several thousand research participants to reflect upon the distribution of wealth in their country and across the globe. We will closely collaborate with Oxfam International to produce insights that can improve advocacy campaigning. Finally, several outreach activities in social and legacy media will make sure that the implications of our research reach a general audience.