Abstract
The literature on alternative media has flourished in recent decades. With the rise of digital media, and the parallel development of transnational mobilizations such as the global justice movements at the end of the 1990s, scholars in Latin America, North America and Europe have engaged more in the study of alternative media, paying special attention to its emancipatory potential and the empowering practices. Such literature provided different definitions of what alternative media is in comparison with other media, and which are the features that render alternative media alternative? Is it how they are produced and circulated or the types of content they spread in societies?
The same literature also reflects on the differences between alternative media created in past media ecologies – mostly revolving around print, radio broadcasting and television programming – and those instead developed amid the highly digitalized media ecology we are immersed today. How did alternative media transform themselves when Facebook and other social media platforms became central in our societies? Are alternative media based on older communication technologies still viable today? Another main part of literature focuses on the relationship that activism, mobilizations and social movements have with alternative media. Frequently, activists engage in the production of their information. To what extent and how does alternative media support activists’ struggles? And what is the relationship between activists’ political cultures and how they produce alternative media?
In providing answers to all these questions scholars who investigated alternative media have so far put together a relevant body of knowledge that helps us navigate the peculiarities and contradictions of alternative media. Despite its richness in empirical materials and theoretical perspectives, the extant literature on alternative media still has its underdeveloped areas and it is with great pleasure that we can welcome Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics. With an introduction and 10 chapters, the edited collection tackles some of the questions outlined above by developing a discussion on three main themes that deserve careful attention when considering alternative media today.
First, it looks at the relationship between alternative media and mainstream politics. Second, it considers the importance of alternative media for the far-right. And third, it looks at the mash-up of commercial social media platforms and alternative spaces of participation in the framework of more progressive experiences of alternative media.
Mostly based on North America, the edited collection makes a distinction between entertainment alternative media and participatory alternative media. The former mostly focuses on the production of news and political content for their audiences; the latter prioritizes the creation of spaces in which audiences have a more active role and exert their agency towards the creation of the alternative media contents. In the introduction, Joshua D. Atkinson offers a well-grounded discussion on the debate around alternative media, the main gaps in the literature and the conceptual tools that guide the interpretation of the chapters in the volume. In Chapter 1, Jennifer Rauch focuses on the otherwise neglected relationship between conservative media, mainstream journalists and right-wing audiences suggesting that alternative media oriented towards participatory production and diffusion models are not necessarily progressive.
The first part of the volume considers the interactions between far-right alternative media and institutional political actors in the United States. In Chapter 2, Prashanth Bhat and Krishnan Vasudevan analyse the relationship between the mainstream conservative media National Review and the alt-right news outlet Breitbart News Network during the 2016 US presidential elections. In so doing, they discuss the rise of the latter as a challenger to the more mainstream conservative press, using the potential of digital media as leverage to spread extreme right views within conservative audiences. In Chapter 3, Joshua D. Atkinson and Suzanne Berg investigate how the Tea Party activists in the United States used alternative media. Through qualitative content analysis, they illustrate the emergence of a specific narrow theme, the one of ‘purity’, that Tea Party activists mostly employed to evaluate Republican candidates for office. Qualitative content analysis is also put to work in Chapter 4, in which Joshua D. Atkinson and his co-authors explore the intersection between right-wing alternative media contents and the themes touched on during political campaign discourses of Republican candidates in the context of the New Hampshire primary in 2016. While, according to the authors, it is not possible to speak about an agenda-setting power of right-wing alternative media, the authors show that Republican candidates employed some of the themes central in right-wing alternative media to attract activist attention.
The second part of the volume considers the intricate relationship between alternative media and the mainstream press in the United States, Sweden and New Zealand. In Chapter 5, Chad Painter and Madison Olinger examine how alternative media covered mainstream political news in the state of Ohio during the 2016 election. They point out that alternative media goes beyond election coverage, also performing a monitorial role providing accounts of how the national event deployed at the local level, complementing coverage gaps of local races. In Chapter 6, Kevin Howley shows yet another way in which alternative media contents might infiltrate mainstream media: political satire. Including news otherwise marginalized in the US commercial and corporate media, the satirical radio programme Le Show, broadcast on NPR, shows that satire shares many traits of alternative media and reveals the democratic deficit of US news media. In Chapter 7, Linus Andersson focuses on alternative media from 1995 to 2015 in the Swedish mainstream press to show how the latter frames the former over time. The authors argue, though, that an increase of the media coverage of alternative media in 2015 corresponded to a shift towards the representation of far-right alternative media contents, rather than towards contents related to progressive worldviews. In Chapter 8, Linda Jean Kenix presents her work on how New Zealand bloggers and journalists understand and theorize the journalistic profession. Challenged by blogs and other types of more informal news outlets, and undergoing a severe restructuring of their professional securities, journalists engage in the construction of boundaries that separate them from alternative media practitioners.
The third part of the volume considers the emancipatory potential of alternative media. In Chapter 9, Nune Grigoryan and Wolfgang Suetzl analyse the web-based media network The Young Turks in the United States. The Young Turks has a wide audience outreach and a sustainable financial structure, based on a diversified strategy of financing through socially responsible advertisements, merchandise selling and membership subscriptions. It rests on hybrid media participation, and in which audiences can get involved in multiple ways to support alternative media. Chapter 10 closes the edited collection with a reflection on Indymedia, the participatory alternative media platform that has its roots in the early days of the Global Justice Movement, late in the 1990s, and quickly spread all over the world at the beginning of the 2000s. The authors, Laura A. Stengrim and G. Brandon Knight, consider the Indymedia’s local turn through the case of the Urbana-Champaign IMC and, in so doing, discuss the intersection between global activism and local alternative media, showing how the latter signifies the former within local communities.
Overall, Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics covers many relevant aspects related to alternative media today and it does so from an innovative conceptual angle, bringing together different strands of literature and covering otherwise neglected topics, including far-right alternative media and their relationships with both institutional political actors and mainstream journalism. It is a precious resource for scholars of media studies and political communication, far-right movements and social movements.