Every day, all across America, small groups of strangers gather in nondescript rooms. Under the guidance of professional moderators, these strangers “focus” their feelings on paper plates, vodka advertisements, movie endings, and political sound bites. Microphones in the room record everything said for future review. …
In her fascinating new book, Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation, the political writer Liza Featherstone uses these interviews as a lens on the past, present, and future of the American project. It’s a difficult book to pin down: part history of focus groups; part embedded journalism about focus-group participation; part analysis of the social discourse about focus groups, which so many Americans love to hate. CONT.
Peter C. Baker, Pacific Standard