2020/03/05 by Maria Rae · 129 citations
Social Sciences · #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Social Media and Politics #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Populism #Scholarship #Politics #Context (archaeology) #Digital media #Ideology #Media studies #Sociology #News media #Field (mathematics) #New media #Political science #Law #History
paper · open access · doi:10.1177/1461444820910416
published in New Media & Society 23(5), 1117-1132 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2020/03/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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.