Hyperpartisan news: Rethinking the media for populist politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482091041
Author(s):  
Maria Rae
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Agents ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Media ◽  
Start Ups ◽  
Better Than

Online media sites such as Breitbart News in the United States and The Canary in the United Kingdom have come to prominence as powerful new agents. Their reach and influence in the contemporary digital media ecology have been widely highlighted, yet there has been little scholarship to situate these important new players in the field of political communication. This article argues that, first, these ‘interlopers’ known as the ‘alt-right’ and ‘alt-left’ need to be understood as embedded in the context of populist politics. Second, ‘hyperpartisan’ describes these sites better than the framework of alternative media as it mirrors populism’s ideological pillar of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Finally, a deliberate provocation is argued to name these digital start-ups as news to create a starting point for conceptualising these disruptive new media forces.

scholarly journals Digital Media and the Entrenchment of Right-Wing Populist Agendas

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Manipulation ◽  
Political Divide

Since Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump, news media around the world have given extensive coverage to the issue of disinformation and polarization. This article argues that while the negative effects of social media have dominated the discussion, these effects do not address how right-wing populists have been able to successfully and legitimately use digital media to circumvent traditional media. The article uses the United States and Sweden as case studies about how digital media have helped to achieve electoral success and shift the political direction in both countries—though in quite different ways. It also argues that the sources of right-wing populism go beyond the hitherto dominant left–right political divide, capturing anti-elite sentiment, and promoting exclusionary nationalism. The dominance of the issue of media manipulation has obscured the shift whereby the relation between the media and politics has become more fluid and antagonistic, which fits the populist agenda. This shift requires a rethinking of political communication that includes both the social forces that give rise to populism and the alternative digital channels that entrench them, with implications for the prospects of the role of media in politics in the two countries and beyond.

scholarly journals Rethinking digital media and political change

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
The United States ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
General Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Media Work ◽  
Political Spectrum

The role of new digital media in politics has often been discussed for individual countries and technologies, or at a general level. So far, there are few studies which compare countries and treat new media in the context of the media system as a whole, including traditional and new digital media. The main contribution of this article is to compare two countries at the extremes of the political spectrum and with quite different media systems, the United States and Sweden. It synthesizes what is known to date about digital media in these two cases, including about the uses of Twitter, Facebook and other new media. The article discusses the shortcomings of existing analyses of political communication and of how digital media work in a way that is different from traditional or mass media. The argument is that new media expand input from people into the political systems only at the margins, where they can circumvent established agenda setting and gatekeeping mechanisms. The article develops a framework for understanding digital media which highlights how they extend and diversify the public sphere, even as this sphere is monitored and managed, and still faces the constraint of the limited attention devoted to political issues.

Hybrid media and populist currents in Ireland’s 2016 General Election

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Suiter ◽  
Eileen Culloty ◽  
Derek Greene ◽  
Eugenia Siapera
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Media System ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
North And South America ◽  
Media Data

Populism, or at the very least a ‘populist zeitgeist’ has advanced across the globe with populist actors from across the ideological spectrum at the forefront of politics in Europe, North and South America and Southeast Asia. One of the major components is the media and specifically hybrid media, which can inhibit or magnify populist political tendencies among both parties and voters. We utilised both hand-coded traditional media data and machine learning on social media data in order to disengage the hybrid media nuances for populist storytelling. We find that the media system in Ireland largely inhibits populist politics and messaging and thereby dampens all anti-out-group messaging. Thus, contrary to the literature identifying an inclination towards populism in some types of new media, and the emergence of media populism in similar media systems in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that the Irish media, across all platforms, tend not to focus on populist messaging. In addition, the norms appear to bleed over to social media. These results are important because they potentially provide lessons for other European countries in covering populist actors and they contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of different kinds of media in the representation of populist politics.

The Architecture of Our Discontent

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Media ◽  
First Year ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Right ◽  
Integrated Media ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

This chapter presents the book’s macrolevel findings about the architecture of political communication and the news media ecosystem in the United States from 2015 to 2018. Two million stories published during the 2016 presidential election campaign are analyzed, along with another 1.9 million stories about Donald Trump’s presidency during his first year. The chapter examines patterns of interlinking between online media sources to understand the relations of authority and credibility among publishers, as well as the media sharing practices of Twitter and Facebook users to elucidate social media attention patterns. The data and mapping reveal not only a profoundly polarized media landscape but stark asymmetry: the right is more insular, skewed towards the extreme, and set apart from the more integrated media ecosystem of the center, center-left, and left.

Bossa Mundo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.E. Goldschmitt
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Film Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Brand ◽  
Brazilian Music ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rich Countries

Bossa Mundo chronicles how Brazilian music has been central to Brazil’s national brand in the United States and the United Kingdom since the late 1950s. Scholarly texts on Brazilian popular music generally focus on questions of music and national identity, and when they discuss the music’s international popularity, they keep the artists, recordings, and live performances as the focus, ignoring the process of transnational mediation. This book fills a major gap in Brazilian music studies by analyzing the consequences of moments when Brazilian music was popular in Anglophone markets, with a focus on the media industries. With subject matter as varied as jazz, film music, dance fads, DJ/remix culture, and new models of musical distribution, the book demonstrates how the mediation of Brazilian music in an increasingly crowded transnational marketplace has had lasting consequences for the creative output celebrated by Brazil as part of its national brand. Through a discussion of the political meaning of mass-mediated music in chronologically organized chapters, the book shifts the scholarly focus on the music’s transnational popularity from the scholarly framework of representing Otherness to broader considerations of a media environment where listeners and intermediaries often have differing priorities. The book provides a new model for studying music from culturally rich countries in the Global South where local governments often leverage stereotypes in their national branding project.

Campaigns and Elections in a Changing Media Landscape

2019 ◽  
pp. 403-426
Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini ◽  
Bruce A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Media ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Campaigns And Elections ◽  
The Media

The media landscape of countries across the globe is changing in profound ways that are of relevance to the study and practice of political campaigns and elections. This chapter uses the concept of media regimes to put these changes in historical context and describe the major drivers that lead to a regime’s formation, institutionalization, and dissolution. It then turns to a more detailed examination of the causes and qualities of what is arguably a new media regime that has formed in the United States; the extent to which this phenomenon has or is occurring (albeit in different ways) elsewhere; and how the conduct of campaigns and elections are changing as a result. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of the changing media landscape for the study and practice of campaigns and elections specifically, and democratic politics more generally.

scholarly journals “Wars” on COVID-19 in Slovakia, Russia, and the United States: Securitized Framing and Reframing of Political and Media Communication Around the Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta N. Lukacovic
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frame Element ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
The Government

This study analyzes securitized discourses and counter narratives that surround the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversial cases of security related political communication, salient media enunciations, and social media reframing are explored through the theoretical lenses of securitization and cascading activation of framing in the contexts of Slovakia, Russia, and the United States. The first research question explores whether and how the frame element of moral evaluation factors into the conversations on the securitization of the pandemic. The analysis tracks the framing process through elite, media, and public levels of communication. The second research question focused on fairly controversial actors— “rogue actors” —such as individuals linked to far-leaning political factions or militias. The proliferation of digital media provides various actors with opportunities to join publicly visible conversations. The analysis demonstrates that the widely differing national contexts offer different trends and degrees in securitization of the pandemic during spring and summer of 2020. The studied rogue actors usually have something to say about the pandemic, and frequently make some reframing attempts based on idiosyncratic evaluations of how normatively appropriate is their government's “war” on COVID-19. In Slovakia, the rogue elite actors at first failed to have an impact but eventually managed to partially contest the dominant frame. Powerful Russian media influencers enjoy some conspiracy theories but prudently avoid direct challenges to the government's frame, and so far only marginal rogue actors openly advance dissenting frames. The polarized political and media environment in the US has shown to create a particularly fertile ground for rogue grassroots movements that utilize online platforms and social media, at times going as far as encouragement of violent acts to oppose the government and its pandemic response policy.

scholarly journals News Media Exposure and Political Communication among Libyan Elites at the Time of War

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 330-339
Author(s):  
Abdul-Karim Ziani ◽  
Mokhtar Elareshi ◽  
Khalid Al-Jaber
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media

Abstract Many critical questions concerning the relationship between the news media and political knowledge involve the extent to which the media facilitate learning about news, war and politics. Political awareness - via the news media - affects virtually every aspect of citizens’ political attitudes and behaviours. This paper examines how Libyan elites adopt the news media to access news and information regarding the current Libyan war and politics and how they use political communication and new media to build/spread political awareness. With the expansion of private and state-owned television in Libya, concern has grown that these new TV services will survive in providing information about citizens’ interests, including the new, developing political scene. A total of 134 highly educated Libyan professionals completed an online survey, reporting their perceptions of issues covered by national TV services. This account centres on how those elites consume the media and what level of trust they have in the media and in information and what the role of the media in their country should be. The results show that most respondents, especially those who live outside the country, prefer using different Libyan news platforms. However, 50 per cent of these do not trust these channels as a source of information regarding the civil war, associated conflicts and politics in general. They have grown weary of coverage that represents the interests of those who run or own the services and consequently place little trust in the media. Spreading ‘lies as facts’ has affected the credibility of these services. Politically, these respondents wish the media to discuss solutions and act as a force for good, not for division. They also differed in the number and variety of national news sources that they reportedly used. This paper also highlights the role of social media, mobile telephony and the Internet, as well as the rapidly proliferating private and national media. These findings are also discussed in relation to the growing impact of online sources in Libyan society, social and political change and the emergence of new media platforms as new sources of information.

scholarly journals Politicizing Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”

scholarly journals The importance of media education in rationalizing youth use of digital media An educational vision according to the work of the gatekeeper theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
محسن عبود كشكول
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Media Education ◽  
Fourth Power ◽  
Entertainment Education ◽  
Educational Vision ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Media ◽  
Use Of The Internet

The importance of media education in our present time lies in its supposed role in rationalizing the youth’s use of digital media, as the school is no longer able to continue its knowledge and educational pioneering role in light of the excessive and absurd use of the Internet, just as the teacher is no longer a main source of science and knowledge. Considering the study curricula, addressing the negative impact of the excessive use of digital media on the school, as well as addressing the decline in the role of the family and its withdrawal from educational competition with the school, and thus education has lost the mandate of the school and the family to educate the new generation in favor of the hegemony of the new media authority, which is called metaphorically. Fifth, which overtook all authorities, including the authority of traditional media (the fourth power), so that control over the child went beyond control of his family and parents, and the challenge became before those concerned with education, how can the new media be a source of education, entertainment, education, guidance and direction, and in various methods of influence, By using multiple and amazing techniques that are characterized by transcending the limits of time and space, and according to that the great impact of the new media, we see a decline in public education. Illiteracy and its limited means, as well as retreating and losing its control over the social environment, which calls on researchers to study ways to rationalize media education, enhance human awareness of the media, and give it the largest share in influence and direction, and in social upbringing and raising young and old together.

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