Abstract
Just as I’m writing this review in September 2017, the closure of yet another local newspaper is announced; after 160 years, the Oldham Evening Chronicle is to disappear unless the administrators find a buyer. This follows a summer of journalistic soul-searching following the Grenfell Tower disaster in London, lamenting whether a dogged and vibrant local press could have averted the tragedy. So what is the relevance here? Despite not mentioning ‘local’ in the book’s title, Ian Taylor’s study explores the media relations between local activists and the local media during the 2003 Iraq invasion. It is then a valuable contribution to the growing scholarly attention to local journalism, a much neglected area for research but with growing concerns for its vital yet threatened role in the functioning of local democracies (Firmstone, 2016). Based on careful analysis of surveys, activist and journalist interviews, and content analysis of local press, Taylor examines the degree to which activists prioritised media coverage in their anti-war activities and the nature of the local coverage they received. As Taylor argues, there are good reasons to research local journalism, not least as it has been known to follow different structures and patterns of reporting in comparison with national news.
But the book offers more than an empirical study of local media relations of the anti-war movement. Taylor eloquently guides the reader through the fundamentals of news framing, mass media management and the ‘protest paradigm’ before setting out the specific scope of the empirical study. In his theoretical and contextual chapters (Part 1), he summarises both key complex theories and the controversial nature of the Iraq war in an accessible and intelligent manner. Drawing upon classic studies in this field, the author explains the limitations of the ‘primary definition’ and ‘protest paradigm’ concepts in contemporary reporting while showing how the dynamics of media access, the capacity to set the terms of debate and the conferral of legitimacy, continue to offer significant indicators for the penetration of anti-war arguments and sentiments into the mainstream.
There are a number of ways in which Taylor refines existing typologies here in an insightful fashion. For example, in setting out the existing taxonomies that deal with the reasons social movements pursue media coverage, he observes that they have ‘generally failed to ask questions about how movements aspire to reach and engage with different sections of public opinion’ (p. 41). Taylor labels this a ‘serious oversight’ and proposes a spectrum with four constituencies: ‘those already involved in the anti-war movement, those who were opposed to military action but not involved in the anti-war movement, undecided opinion, and pro-war opinion’ (p. 42; see also p. 109). Having a better sense of who the activists are trying to reach through media coverage, and where this fits in their priorities, would appear to be an overlooked but productive way to scrutinise their strategies.
In Part 2, Taylor turns to the research findings. Through his interviews with activists, he is able to identify three main objectives for activists to engage with the local media: ‘profile promotion’, ‘event promotion’ and ‘frame promotion’ (p. 105). Again the author is alert to the variations in the perceived value of pursuing media coverage and the low expectations of some activists when it comes to gaining meaningful coverage of their reasons for opposing the war (‘frame promotion’).
There are two noteworthy observations here: one is the nature of the activist groups which were run at local level but within a national network that ‘fed, sustained, and supported the movement’ (p. 86). Taylor’s detailed account clarifies how activists and groups are motivated by varied moral and political objections (e.g. pacifism, illegality of the war, anti-imperialism). The groups therefore consist of ‘compromise coalitions’ (p. 95) bringing together many people opposed to the war but for differing reasons, which in turn leads to a flexible ‘minimalist manifesto’ (p. 98). So it could well be, as Taylor concludes, ‘the sociological imperative to maintain some semblance of unity triumphed over, and to some extent constrained, the movement’s capacity to communicate effectively to a mass audience’ (p. 201).
Second is the existence of alternative media platforms, and especially online ‘new’ media. Such communication platforms facilitate the supportive promotion of anti-war ‘profiles’, ‘events’ and ‘frames’ in the activists’ own words and style and therefore reduce dependence on the profit-oriented mainstream media. But Taylor also points out that such material often fails to reach the publics who are not already opposed to military action and therefore ‘do little more than just “preach to the converted”’ (p. 200).
When it comes to reporting the local press content analysis, the shadow of the ‘protest paradigm’ looms over the study and Taylor addresses its limitations both in relation to local media and for this particular war. In this section, Taylor provides another refinement of an established typology, in this case modifying Daniel Hallin’s (1986) ‘spheres of controversy’ model from his seminal study on the Vietnam War. By employing clear criteria to guide the coding of the qualities of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘deviance’, Taylor makes a further helpful distinction between ‘partial’ or ‘full’ legitimacy and ‘implicit’ or ‘explicit’ deviance in the local press’ reporting of anti-war activism (pp. 149–154).
While the interview testimony reveals that activists rarely mentioned concerns of legitimacy, Taylor finds that there are occasions when the actions of the anti-war movement become ‘unacceptable’ in a largely conservative local media keen not to offend its broad readership. Notably the ‘truant protests’, where teenage activists skipped school to attend demonstrations, fall into this category. Here, Taylor points to the commercial imperatives but also the monopoly positions of established newspapers such as the Manchester Evening News. The requirement to appeal broadly to a comprehensive local readership avoids the polarising proclivities observed in the national press, but arguably serves the status quo through conformist codes of ‘impartiality’ that work to favour official political sources.
Taylor includes selected case studies to enrich the content analysis results and illuminate the differences between the newspapers, noting a tendency for weekly newspapers to print more friendly and responsive coverage than the evening papers. One activist cheekily suggests a reason for this: ‘If you went to them and said “here’s a story,” they’d say, “thank God, we can now fill that blank space!”’ (p. 117). In contrast, the evening papers were more ‘competitive news arenas’ (Hallin’s (1986).
As Taylor argues, it is important not to fall for ‘technologically determinist hype surrounding the internet in relation to politician activism’ (p. 200) and it is also important to remember that the period examined pre-dates the arrival of Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. However, given its publication in 2017, I did wonder if some of the short sections on ‘new’ and ‘alternative’ media could be further extended. Even the terminology employed here seems somewhat old-fashioned now. Rather than a clear dividing line between mainstream and ‘new’ or ‘alternative’ media, I would suggest a more dynamic relationship: local newspapers operate within a news environment in which local and regional players negotiate their particular remit, but as part of a communicative exchange with hyperlocal magazines, radio stations, community forums and bloggers, often with a civic-minded if not campaigning ethos of their own.
While the study is in productive dialogue with classic studies of ‘challengers’ in the media (Hallin, Deacon and Golding, Wolfsfeld, etc), there is less attention paid to the emerging scholarship on how social movements use the myriad digital communication tools to organise and mobilise and how the emotional and performance dimensions of contentious politics are considered vital to building solidarity and momentum. There are hints that the book might address how the 2003 anti-war movement has sustained itself and responded to the wars in Syria and Libya (pp. 69–70), but this is not really pursued. Given the striking developments in research on protest culture in the intervening years, I would be interested to see the author apply his perceptive analysis to the theoretical threads developed in more recent work. Perhaps it would take another book to extend the dialogue further and address the varied ways in which offline and online networks provide mechanisms to support political convictions, share knowledge and encourage civic engagement, and indeed what this means for wider public understanding of distant wars.
Overall this is a theoretically rich study with original and fascinating empirical work on traditionally neglected areas: local news and the media strategies of grassroots activism. This is a deeply valuable contribution at a time in which local journalism faces a diverse set of challenges and activists vie for the attention of wider publics in politically unsettling times.