Felt like these had to go somewhere

My thesis contends that the JFK assassination was not just a single crime but a catalytic media event that reconfigured the American “regime of credibility.” I trace how Oswald’s ideological bricolage and the Warren Commission’s lone-gunman narrative entered—and were affirmed through—mid-century broadcast norms (Equal Time Rule, Fairness Doctrine), before colliding with an emergent counter-public of researchers, alternative presses, and later televised shocks (the public airing of the Zapruder film, subsequent congressional inquiries). Using government records, network transcripts, alternative journalism, and contemporaneous polling, I map a two-wave skepticism: an immediate 1960s erosion of trust and a 1970s-90s reactivation as declassification and investigative television expanded the evidentiary field. I argue that this process didn’t merely polarize opinion; it professionalized lay inquiry, shifted audiences from passive reception to active verification, and established a durable feedback loop between secrecy, disclosure, and televised interpretation. In short, I show how November 22–24, 1963 inaugurated a modern media politics in which citizens negotiate authority not by accepting official accounts, but by testing them. This analysis showed a ripple effect from JFK's assassination to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the 2024 election shift led by media figures such as Joe Rogan. Through my research it became apparent that these contemporary phenomena stemmed from established (but un-identified) trends that emerged from Kennedy's assassination and rippled through American political and media development.

In my junior paper, I argue that the UFC’s rise from near-insolvency to a global entertainment powerhouse owed less to any single star or product than to a managerial playbook organized around loyalty—political, personal, and commercial. I trace how early regulatory headwinds were converted into legitimacy (unified rules and sustained regulator engagement), how media pivots scaled the business (from The Ultimate Fighter and Fight Nights to FOX and then ESPN, expanding beyond pure PPV), how targeted acquisitions (WEC, WFA, Strikeforce) deepened the roster, and how star-making served as an engine rather than a gamble. I show that reciprocal alliances—Joe Rogan’s platform, Donald Trump’s venues and symbolism, and the later WWE/TKO merger—mirrored historic conservative business coalitions and shaped labor politics (e.g., the Culinary Union’s New York fight). My through-line is that “loyalty” functions as strategy: a networked trust that lowers transaction costs, enforces message discipline, accelerates regulatory and cultural acceptance, and monetizes identity—turning a once-banned spectacle into a mainstream, multi-stream enterprise.

In my junior paper, I argue that Richard Francis Burton’s early “success” was real—but engineered through purposeful identity manipulation that exploited gaps in Victorian authority. By toggling between masks (from the pseudonymous travel writer to “Mirza/Dr. Abdullah” on the Haj), I show how he leveraged institutional blind spots in the East India Company and the Royal Geographical Society to win patronage, deflect scrutiny, and convert performance into credibility. Reading his Personal Narrative against the grain, I highlight how staged authenticity and a network of informants produced valuable hydrology, ethnography, and logistics—while also smuggling bias into the record. The point is not to deny Burton’s contributions; it’s to show how a deft performer could game the rules, monetize notoriety, and still enrich the archive. Ultimately, my paper uses Burton as a case study in imperial epistemics: how porous bureaucracies and credentialing practices can be manipulated for personal gain even as they yield knowledge that society continues to use.