Resisting the News

Engaged Audiences, Alternative Media, and Popular Critique of Journalism

Jennifer Rauch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000298123
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Journalismus

Resisting the News brings together unique insights from activists and alternative-media users to offer a distinctive perspective on the problems of journalism today—and how to fix them.

Using critical-cultural theory and, in particular, the conceptual frameworks of ritual communication and interpretive communities, this book examines how audiences filter their interpretations of mainstream news through the prisms of their identities and experiences with alternative media and political protest. Jennifer Rauch gives voice to alternative-media audiences and illuminates the cultural resources, values, assumptions, critical skills, and discursive strategies through which they make sense of their news environments. Drawing on a 15-year research project, Rauch employs a variety of qualitative, quantitative, and quasi-ethnographic methods, including focus groups, media-use diaries, close-ended surveys, and open-ended questions, to paint a layered portrait of liberal and conservative critiques of journalism.

Shedding new light on popular theories about "how news works" and about "mass" audiences, this book will be useful to students, scholars, and teachers of political communication, journalism studies, media studies, and critical-cultural studies.

1
POPULAR THEORIES OF MAINSTREAM AND ALTERNATIVE NEWS

The power of alternative news sources to sway mainstream political communication has long remained hidden, subtle, and underestimated. Many people who make, use, and study the news once assumed that alternative media exerted little public influence; even those who wished the genre were consequential lamented its limited impact. Such media were often viewed as marginal, perhaps obsolete, descendants of the revolutionary, abolitionist, labor, socialist, ethic, underground, gay, and feminist press. Until recently, alternative media were widely presumed to have a liberal or progressive disposition toward issues such as civil rights, women’s equality, pacifism, and environmental protection; that is, until the U.S. presidential campaign of 2016 revealed the extent to which a right-wing media ecosystem bolstered by nontraditional sources like partisan blogs, niche publications, and conspiracy websites could dominate the mainstream news agenda and shape electoral outcomes.¹ Manipulative actors sometimes plant stories in alternative media to give them a sheen of legitimacy and draw the attention of legitimate journalists, a practice called “trading up the chain.”² Alternative media also serve as testing grounds where political actors develop and refine new ideas to see what resonates with audiences. Those concepts and arguments then move into mainstream arenas through press releases, op-ed columns, talk radio, and TV news roundtables.³ It is clear that alternative media, mainstream journalism, political communication, and citizen knowledge are deeply intertwined in the public sphere.

Alternative news sources—which can be hyper-partisan or centrist or bounce across the ideological spectrum—have grown in prominence to become key vectors of information for many citizens. Mainstream journalism from corporate entities such as ABC, CNN, NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post—as well as from public broadcasters like BBC, NPR, and PBS—featured prominently among favored U.S. sources for 2016 campaign news,⁴ and so did news from digital-native organizations such as BuzzFeed, Drudge Report, Huffington Post, and Reddit, as well as from “outrage outlets” such as Fox News and MSNBC.⁵ Partisan blogs like the Blaze, Daily Kos, InfoWars, Newsmax, and Salon attracted between 5 million and 15 million viewers monthly.⁶ In the 2020 election cycle, news purveyors such as the Atlantic, Common Dreams, Daily Beast, Daily Caller, Washington Times, Breitbart, and Reddit were among the most popular online publishers, alongside more traditional sources.⁷

In parallel with the rise of non-legacy news sources in the 21st century, trust in mainstream journalism has dropped among audiences of all ideological stripes.⁸ Confidence in institutions like government and business stayed relatively steady, yet confidence in the press declined precipitously from 1973 to 2008.⁹ Mainstream broadcast and cable TV news networks remain among the most watched by Americans, but they are among the least trusted media sources.¹⁰ At the same time, alternative news sources such as the Atlantic, BBC, Democracy Now!, Drudge Report, Instapundit, Politico, Powerline, PBS, Vox, and Young Turks have risen into the ranks of most trusted.¹¹

When faced with a choice between different messages and different sets of “facts” offered by mainstream and alternative media, people continually choose to consume and trust certain sources over others. Why do alternative-media enthusiasts turn to news sources such as Brietbart, Daily Kos, Mother Jones, or the Weekly Standard instead of ABC, CNN, Newsweek, or the New York Times? What values and ideals do these audiences associate with the genre called “alternative media,” and how do they distinguish it from oft-derided “mainstream media” (nicknamed MSM)? Why do alternative-media users—many of whom are avid political activists—feel distrust or even antipathy toward the legacy press?

This book offers answers to these questions to help us better understand how and why people make such news choices. Resisting the News extends our knowledge of alternative media’s role in the news ecosystem by closely examining the attitudes and behaviors of their audiences, about whom we know relatively little. It explores the dynamic interplay between alternative media and mainstream journalism by probing the values and assumptions that engaged audiences bring to their news encounters. It illuminates the discursive resources and strategies through which people make sense of the news. And, it reconfigures our definition of “alternative media” by viewing this category from the perspective of audiences, rather than that of scholars, journalists, or alternative news creators.

Alternative Media Matters

Other. Alternate. Another. Different. These are common synonyms for alternative. It seems self-evident that some media are different from others. The term “alternative media” contains a multitude of meanings—from a simple understanding of this category as opposing “mainstream media” to complex definitions that are more problematic, contentious, and slippery. John Downing, who helped found this area of research, described alternative media as both a form of resistance to power structures in society and a voice of social movements.¹² Another key figure is Chris Atton, who described alternative media in terms of their organizational processes and participatory production as much as by their content.¹³ This sphere of work takes into account a panoply of alternative forms and genres: public-access television, community radio, activist websites, zines, and other radical, citizens, or grassroots media—even street theater, flyers, graffiti, and buttons.¹⁴ Research on the evolution of U.S. alternative media has focused on radical communication, social movements, and the dissident press spanning from revolutionary days to the present.¹⁵ People often bestow the moniker “alternative” upon particular media based on the roles those projects play in their individual lives or in the broader culture.

Scholars and practitioners who once conceived of alternative/mainstream as a dichotomy now tend to view these media genres on a spectrum or a continuum, with many hybrids and few “pure” instances.¹⁶ Many audience members have similar difficulty distinguishing between the two. In some ways, there is now more overlap between the content, forms, and practices of alternative and mainstream media than there used to be; in other ways, we have become more cognizant of similarities that have always existed but were often overlooked. The goal of placing all media into two categories, alternative and mainstream, disregards the ways in which these interdependent genres resemble, influence, interact, and compete with each other. While recognizing the limitations of a binary conception of alternative-mainstream, I use it in this book as an organizational and analytical device. For me, the terms “alternative media” and “mainstream media” express two ideal types, not empirically distinct phenomena. I strive to use this vocabulary in ways consistent with the discourse of my informants, which will be shared anon.

In the minds of alternative-media admirers, a major distinction between alternative and mainstream media is that the former produces critical content with the primary goal of promoting social change (with financial considerations taking a back seat), while the latter is mainly motivated by the pursuit of profit (with little regard for the social impact of news). Empirically, as well as subjectively, there are particular producer motives and content attributes that support this characterization of alternative media. Research shows that many alternative creators share with activist consumers the goal of struggling for a better world. Mainstream journalists might sometimes be driven by a desire for social change, but they are rarely as explicit and vocal about this motivation as alternative news producers are. Mainstream content is also less likely to express ideologies as radical as those in alternative media—to wit, leftist publications that frequently put forth visions of a world beyond capitalism.¹⁷

Resisting the News focuses primarily on a particular subset of alternative media that my study participants found integral to their lives: alternative news media, the alternative press, and alternative journalism. The latter label is typically applied to “alternative media practices that involve reporting and/or commenting on factual and/or topical events, as opposed to wider cultural or artistic forms of alternative media,” Tony Harcup explained.¹⁸ This category encompasses a wide range of newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, broadcast stations, blogs, social networking platforms, and other media spaces that “are primarily informed by a critique of existing ways (the dominant practices) of doing journalism.”¹⁹ This conception of alternative media is widespread in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other liberal democratic contexts with high levels of economic development, technological access, and press freedom—in contrast with nations enjoying less development, access, and freedom.²⁰ Elements of popular critique that this book will examine include news sourcing and framing routines, the commercial model of journalism, the professional norm of objectivity, and modes of addressing audiences.

My research participants deemed not only a wide array of media “alternative”—particularly legacy alternative press institutions, public broadcasting, foreign sources, and political blogs and websites, but also satirical news, social media, and partisan commentators. These audience-derived definitions of alternative media guided discussions and analyses throughout this book. Experiences with other radical, ethnic, or community media appeared less frequently in their responses. The range of alternative media you will encounter in the conversations and analyses to follow encompasses sources such as

• the legacy alternative press (e.g., Alternet, Counterpunch, Democracy Now!, Human Events, Mother Jones, the Nation, National Review, the New American, the Progressive, the Washington Spectator, Z Magazine);
• political blogs and political news websites (e.g., Altercation, Bretibart News, Common Dreams, Crooks and Liars, Daily Kos, Drudge Report, NewsBusters, Patriot Post, Politico, Talking Points Memo, Think Progress, Townhall, Truthdig, Truthout); and
• partisan broadcasters and commentators (e.g., Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Michael Savage, Michele Malkin, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity)—what Jeffery Berry and Sarah Soberiej have called “outrage media.”

These engaged audiences reported also using daily newspapers, newsweeklies, news magazines (e.g., the New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s), public broadcasters with a centrist orientation (National Public Radio, PBS, C-SPAN), noncommercial campus and community sources, foreign-language media, CNN, and British news sources (the BBC, Economist, Guardian).²¹ They attended to news from watchdog and advocacy organizations such as American Family Association, Americans for Prosperity, Center for American Progress, Family Research Council, Heritage Foundation, and Media Matters. Admittedly, it is challenging to ascribe these news sources to categories, a fact that emphasizes the extent to which our media system is hybridized.²² Whither to place outlets such as the Huffington Post and The Daily Show—which might not seem like “alternative media” to some people but are viewed as such by members of these communities? The audience perspectives share...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Popular Theories of Mainstream and Alternative News
• 2 The Probability of Resistance in Empirical News Audiences
• 3 Parsing Divergent Responses to Mainstream News
• 4 Lay Theories of the Mass Audience for News
• 5 Lay Theories of the Political Economy of News
• 6 Activist Interactions With Mainstream Journalism
• 7 Alternative Media Rituals and Subcultural Capital
• 8 News Omnivores, Hybrid Media, and Alternative Ideals
• 9 Partisan Interpretations of Media Problems and Solutions
• 10 Journalism in an Age of Alternatives
• Appendix A: Interview Guide
• Appendix B: Diary Instructions and Sample Page
• Appendix C: Survey Questions
• Appendix D: Additional Qualitative Survey Data
• Bibliography
• Index