Right-wing alternative news media and digital politics

• At the heart of academic theorising about media and their political role in modern democratic society, there has always been concern for the power that is possible to wield through mass-mediated symbolic representation (Thompson, 1995). This power is expressed through various processes, such as, normalising viewpoints and preferences, while ostracizing others (Ramasubramanian & Yadlin-Segal, 2017), focus attention to specific issues, while ignoring others, representing acceptability and anathemizing otherness. Ultimately, the spectrum of various expressions and exercises of media power laid bare by media scholarship so far, has to some extent always rested upon the notion of there being a few highly influential and dominant media outlets in a given context, which form the basis for an infrastructure of dissemination, that distribute news-content to a mass-audience, thereby constituting a framework for the formation of a shared frame of reference among citizens. Although terminology is still debated, these are commonly referred to as “mainstream media” or alternatively as “legacy media”. Discussion about the power of media in relation to political life, has therefore been related to the concentration of ownership, distributive reach and capacity for production among a few actors who will be centrally placed and therefore play key roles in the shaping of political discussions, information and the conditions for participation. The internet, and the social media, “web 2.0” (O´Reilly, 2005) revolution added a new layer to this, since it opened up possibilities for participation and visibility in a new way, partly tearing down a long held, and well established power-concentration among the influential media operations

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Medievetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Media Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Digital politics

alternative media

culture war

culture wars

Medievetenskap och journalistik

Media Studies and Journalism

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)