between the devil and the deep blue sea · structuur van de organisatie en de selectie en...

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA MAINSTREAM AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA FROM A SOCIAL CHANGE PERSPECTIVEWetenschappelijke verhandeling Aantal woorden: 17.687

Anna Jakoba Ryckewaert Stamnummer: 01205643 Promotor: Prof. dr. Koen Bogaert Copromotor: Prof. dr. Robin Thiers Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de richting Politieke Wetenschappen afstudeerrichting Internationale Politiek Academiejaar: 2017 - 2018

ABSTRACT (NL) In deze thesis wordt de rol van journalistiek in een process van sociale verandering onderzocht. Aan de hand van een literatuurstudie worden de concepten democratie en hegemony onderzocht in relatie met journalistiek, en worden de verschillen en gelijkenissen tussen sociale bewegingen en alternatieve media onderzocht. Aan de hand daarvan wordt de rol van journalistiek geherintepreteerd als die van een agonistisch representatief democratisch instituut. Die herinterpretatie is voornamelijk gebaseerd op Laclau en Mouffe’s (2001) analyse van het concept hegemonie. Het tweede deel van deze thesis onderzoekt enkele belangrijke karakteristieken zowel mainstream als alternatieve media, met het oog op hoe die karakteristieken bijstaan of tegenwerken in een proces van sociale verandering. Karakterisieken met betrekking tot zowel het niveau waarop media opereren (lokaal/nationaal/globaal), als de structuur van de organisatie en de selectie en presentatie van “nieuws” zullen aan bod komen. Mainstream media kregen doorheen de geschiedenis zo vorm dat ze een serieuze hinderpaal vormen voor sociale verandering, de alternatieve praktijken tonen dan weer potentieel. Toch blijft het landschap van alternatieve media voornamelijk een amalgam aan individuele contra-hegemonische discours die zelden kruisen. Om een vorm van journalistiek te bereiken die agonistisch debat een plaats geeft, zullen verschillende aspecten van het volledige journalistieke proces moeten worden herdacht.

(EN) This thesis explores the role of journalism in a process of social change. By investigating the concepts of democracy and hegemony in relation to journalism, and by comparing alternative media to social movements, the proposition is made that media may function as an agonistic representative institution of (radical) democracy. This claim is mostly based on Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) analysis of hegemony. The second part of this thesis explores several core characteristics of both mainstream and alternative media, with the aim of investigating how these characteristics aid or obstruct such a role in a process of social change. Characteristics on both the level of operation, the structure of media organisations, and the selection and presentation of “news” will be discussed. Whereas history has engrained forceful obstructions in mainstream media approaches, the practices of alternative media do show some potential. However, the field of alternative media mostly remains an amalgam of individual counter-hegemonic discourses that rarely intersect. To achieve a form of journalism which fosters agonistic debates, many aspects of the complete journalistic production process will have to be re-imagined.

MEDIA&FROM&A&SOCIAL&CHANGE&PERSPECTIVE&&

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Table of Contents

Introduction*........................................................................................................................*3&1.*The*Media*Crisis*as*an*Opportunity*........................................................................*4&2.*Social*Change*and*Media*............................................................................................*6&2.1*Social*Change*and*Hegemony*..........................................................................................*6&2.2*Social*Movements*and*Alternative*Media*................................................................*14&

3.*Media*&*journalism*...................................................................................................*27&3.1.*Mainstream*media*..........................................................................................................*30&3.1.1.&Level&of&Operation:&The&State&and&the&West&..................................................................&32&3.1.2.&Organisational&structure:&commercial&and&hierarchical&..........................................&35&3.1.3.&Topic&selection&and&presentation:&New,&Near&and&Objective&.................................&43&

3.2.*Alternative*media*............................................................................................................*47&3.2.1.&Level&of&Operation:&Local&.......................................................................................................&50&3.2.2.&Organisational&Structure:&NonRcommercial&and&Horizontal&..................................&54&3.2.3.&Topic&selection&and&presentation:&unifying&the&dominated&....................................&59&

4.*Towards*journalism*as*a*radical*democratic*institution*...*Error!&Bookmark&not&defined.&Conclusion*.........................................................................................................................*62&References*.........................................................................................................................*64&Appendix*I:*partial&transcription&of&Which%Future%for%Democracy%in%a%Post4political%Age? A%Lecture%by%Chantal%Mouffe&(2017)*.....................................................*68&Appendix*II:*table&Positioning&the&four&theoretical&approaches&(Carpentier,&2007,&p.&2)*...........................................................................................................................*72&Appendix*III:*Table&Defining%community&(Carpentier,&2007,&p.&11)*......................*73&&

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Introduction

The&aim&of&this&thesis&is&to&redefine&journalism&from&a&social&change&perspective.&

&The&recent&years&have&been&marked&by&a&viability&crisis&of&mainstream&media,&

raising&the&question&whether&a&commercial&model&for&journalism&is&still&—&or&

ever&was&—&desirable&at&all.&This&opens&up&the&opportunity&to&radically&revise&the&

role&of&journalism,&but&in&order&to&do&that&such&a&revision&must&go&beyond&

replacing&mainstream&media&with&existing&alternative&approaches,&even&if&these&

are&nonRcommercial.&Through&a&literature&study&synthesizing&political&and&

communication&theory,&this&thesis&aims&to&give&such&a&redefinition&a&firm&

theoretical&ground.&The&first&two&sections&are&aimed&at&answering&the&following&

questions:&

&

(1) What&is&the&nature&of&the&mainstream&media&crisis,&and&how&does&it&relate&

to&journalism’s&societal&function?&

(2) What&is&the&function&of&journalism&in&a&process&of&social&change?&

&

The&latter&question&will&be&answered&by&exploring&the&concepts&of&democracy&and&

hegemony&in&relation&to&journalism,&and&by&looking&at&the&similarities&and&

differences&between&social&movements&and&alternative&media.&The&third&section&

analyses&both&mainstream&and&alternative&media&on&three&levels:&(1)&the&level&on&

which&the&media&operate&(global/national/local),&(2)&the&structure&of&the&

organization,&and&(3)&the&way&these&media&select&and&present&their&topics.&The&

aim&is&to&analyse&the&main&characteristics&of&both&mainstream&and&alternative&

media,&relating&to&whether&they&aid&or&obstruct&a&social&change&process.&

&


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Journalism&has&often&taken&a&backseat&in&political&theory,&and&communication&

theory&tends&to&lack&a&firm&political&background.&Many&meaningful&contributions&

aimed&at&gapping&this&divide&have&been&made,&including&by&Carrol&and&Hackett&

(2006),&Muhlmann&(2008)&and&Carpentier&(2007).&A&true&synthesis,&however,&

remains&an&arduous&task.&The&implications&of&Mouffe&and&Laclau’s&(2001)&postR

structuralist&analysis&of&hegemony,&open&up&an&immense&field&of&possibilities&and&

hurdles&in&a&political&analysis&of&journalism.&Many&of&these&implications&will&be&

discussed,&but&many&of&them&remain&to&be&unraveled.&As&this&thesis&has&a&

primarily&political&focus,&the&inclusion&of&insights&from&communicative&theory&

risks&falling&short&of&capturing&the&progress&made&in&this&field.&That&being&said,&

discussing&journalism&as&a&potential&radical&institution&of&democracy,&challenges&

many&assumptions&made&in&the&academic&field&of&journalism&as&well.&

1. The Media Crisis as an Opportunity

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According to several authors (Blumler, 2010; Almiron-Roig, 2011; Trappel,

Steemers & Thomass, 2015), we are experiencing a media crisis. Blumler (2010, p.

243) defines this crisis as being one on two legs; a “crisis of viability” on one hand,

and a “crisis of civic adequacy” on the other. The relatively recent crisis of viability is

mostly a financial matter; the journalistic sector is struggling to survive the transition

from analogue to digital media, the internet in particular, confronted with a huge

amount of competing free content and a steep decline in advertising revenue

(Blumler, 2010, p. 243-4). Almiron-Roig (2011, p. 39) adds that the financial crisis of

2008 has significantly accelerated this downward spiral. The crisis of civic adequacy

is less recent, and deals with an impoverishing contribution of media to citizenship


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and democracy (Blumler, 2010, p. 234).

This analysis of the media crisis follows a mainstream media perspective. Whereas

the distinction between mainstream and alternative media is often elusive (cf. section

3), it is clear that the crisis on two legs is mainly a crisis of the archetype of

mainstream western media, which is privately owned and derives its civic adequacy

and notions of democracy from its position within the liberal democratic state and the

global North. The crisis of viability is a crisis of the commercial structure of the

media, and alternative media are often non-commercial (Bailey, Cammaerts and

Carpentier, 2007, p. 18). Whereas on one hand, this does not mean that the

mainstream crisis of viability has left alternative media untouched, what is more

important is that non-commercial alternative media tend to find themselves in a

perpetual crisis of viability (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 1432). Almiron-Roig (2011,

p. 39) distinguishes two voices in the search for a solution to the media crisis, a

“mainstream call” — the search for a new business model — and an “alternative call”

by those for whom “it is undeniable that if capitalism fails, the solution is not more

capitalism” (Almiron-Roig, 2011, p. 40). In light of the perpetual crisis of viability of

alternative media, it must be clear that this alternative answer is not a simple matter of

replacing the commercial business model with existing non-commercial models.

These non-commercial models serve as important and interesting prefigurations, but

the role of alternative media must be reimagined more thoroughly in the light of this

crisis.

For one, the mainstream crisis has not resulted in any shrinkage of the global data

flow of “terabytes of commentary and information” (Dean, 2010, p. 102), meaning


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that it has not left a clear gap or vacuum which alternative media can now fill in.

Although the crisis has lead to a considerable amount of bankruptcies in the media

sector, especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the more persistent trend is

one of media institutions adapting their “product” to this new reality. The question is

to what extent this transformed “product” still counts as journalism, the danger being

that this shift will also transform our definition of what journalism is or should be.

Which brings us to the civic adequacy of journalism, the axis of any definition of

journalism that goes beyond its role as a commodity. The objective of this thesis is to

reinterpret the societal role of journalism from a social change perspective. This will,

mainly through the work of Laclau and Mouffe (2001), allow to redefine journalism

in terms of an agonistic representative institution of democracy.

2. Social Change and Media

2.1 Social Change and Hegemony

&Social change

What will be explored in this thesis is the role of journalism in a process of social

change. Social change is an elusive, but at the same time crucial term. It is elusive

because its basic definition — the significant alteration of social structure and cultural

patterns through time (Leicht, 2013, n.p.) — leaves much to the imagination. It does

not address what structures or patterns need to be altered, on what level, by whom,

etc. Some of these dimensions will have to be defined more precisely, but at the same

time, a certain level of broadness will be maintained throughout this thesis. This is

because the role of journalism will be defined as one of fostering agonistic debate.

Agonistic debate entails recognising the constitutive antagonism within society, not


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only between hegemony and counter-hegemony, but also between autonomous

counter-hegemonic struggles. Thus, this thesis will refrain from narrowing down the

type of change to a matter of class, race, gender, or even all of these at the same time.

That being said, capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism will feature prominently as

power structures that have shaped a media landscape in which some have a voice, and

others do not.

At the same time, social change is also a crucial term. It could be argued that many

mainstream media are already actors of social change, since they challenge powers

within the state in their role of a watchdog. Whether mainstream media still manage

to fulfill this function within liberal democracy is questionable, but what seems clear

is that they have never managed to fundamentally criticize liberal democracy itself.

Their existence depends on their role within liberal democracy; they might criticize

the proper working of the system, but they are often incapable of criticizing the

system itself. In that sense, the archetype of mainstream journalism is not an agent of

significant alteration of social structures and cultural patterns. Alternative media, on

the other hand, do often produce counter-hegemonic discourses. What is lacking, is an

agonistic debate between these individual discourses. It will be argued that we need a

more structured organization that really allows for confrontation, as opposed to only a

media landscape allowing groups to retreat in their own discursive bubble.

Hegemony

The struggle for social change can be defined as a counter-hegemonic struggle in the

Gramscian sense. Gramsci’s (1985) theory of cultural hegemony is in its essence an


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extension of the concept of power. According to Gramsci, capitalist societies are not

only maintained through formal or coercive power by the state, but also through

complex cultural and ideological processes that guarantee the consent of citizens

(Carragee, 1993, p. 330). The production of meaning and values by social institutions

play a crucial role in legitimizing the political order (Carragee, 1993, p. 330). Gramsci

adds that the press is the most prominent and dynamic part of the ideological structure

through which the dominant class maintains, defends and develops an ideological

front (Gramsci, 1985).

Cultural hegemony points to the production of meaning and values, and the press as

its most prominent and dynamic institution, as a crucial field in the struggle for social

change. However, it does not yet bring us closer to what a counter-hegemonic

struggle in the field of media could or should look like. Establishing that hegemony is

produced through, among others, media institutions, does not show us how a

fragmented field of counter-hegemonic alternative media can be an efficient counter-

hegemonic force. In order to do that, we have to look at the term hegemony and its

origins more closely. What is important here, is the relation between hegemony and

democracy. This is especially relevant since the role of the media has often been

defined in terms of its democratic function, the problem being that democracy and the

liberal democratic state are often equivocated (cf. section 3.1.1.). Hegemony and

Socialist Strategy (HSS) by Laclau and Mouffe (2001) was constructed “around the

vicissitudes of the concept of hegemony, of the new logic of the social implicit within

it, and of the 'epistemological obstacles' which, from Lenin to Gramsci, prevented a

comprehension of its radical political and theoretical potential” (Laclau & Mouffe,

2001, p. 192). Laclau and Mouffe state that the concept of hegemony emerges in a


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context “dominated by the experience of fragmentation and by the indeterminacy of

the articulations between different struggles and subject positions” (1985, p. 13). The

concept of hegemony has always comprised a certain recognition of fragmentation

and plurality within counter-hegemony, but as the authors show, a structural

determinism or economism, and with it the desire to reduce that fragmentation to an

underlying unity, has often persisted. What arises from the Laclau and Mouffe’s

(2001) analysis of hegemony is that antagonism between these diverse forces is

constitutive of the social, meaning that we must enter into the struggle for a radical

democracy that can provide us an arena where these differences can be confronted.

The concept of hegemony first arose in Russian social democracy, in order to address

the “autonomous political intervention which was made possible by the structural

dislocation between actors and democratic tasks that resulted from the late

development of capitalism in Russia” (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. xii). The

democratic task at hand was the struggle for political liberty, and the “natural” actor

— in an orthodox Marxist sense — was the bourgeoisie. In the Russian context,

however, the bourgeoisie was too impotent to carry out this task (Laclau and Mouffe,

2001, p. 48-49). The working class thus had to take upon itself a task which was not

its own, and step into the field of politics, which made at an alliance with other actors

necessary. In the light of a possible role for journalism, it is important to note that part

of the Bourgeois political task was the creation of a public sphere, the press being its

“most preeminent institution” (Habermas, 1989, p. 181). Habermas’ ideal of the

public sphere is based on his research on the Bourgeois public sphere that emerged

around 1700; the ideal of mediation between society and state, where consensus is

reached through discursive argumentation (Kellner 2014). The role of the press, so


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crucial to both Habermas and Gramsci, has tended to fade into the background in HSS

as well as in other works by Mouffe. The issue with the working class assuming this

Bourgeois political task, according to Laclau and Mouffe (2001, p. 54), is that this

new political task was only seen as a stepping-stone to advance towards strictly class

objectives:

[T]he presence of classes in the political field [could] only be understood as a

representation of interests. Through their representative parties they unite

under the leadership of one class, in an alliance against a common enemy.

This circumstantial unity does not, however, affect the identity of the classes

comprising the alliance, since their identity is constituted around 'interests'

which are in the end strictly incompatible (‘strike together but march

separately’). This exteriority was at the root of those paradoxical situations in

which the communist militant typically found himself. Often in the vanguard

of a struggle for democratic liberties, he nevertheless could not identify with

them since he would be the first to abolish them once the 'bourgeois-

democratic' stage was completed.

(Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 55)

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Mouffe and Laclau note, however, that the idea of a hegemonic relation between

groups with different interests “entails a conception of politics which is potentially

more democratic than anything found within the tradition of the Second

International.” (2001, p. 55). It accepts the political validity of a plurality of

antagonisms, which means that the working class is no longer the only holder of

revolutionary legitimacy (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 56). It is Gramsci who will bring

us closer to the democratic potential of the concept of hegemony, by making the


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decisive transition from political leadership as a “conjunctural coincidence of

interests” towards moral and intellectual leadership ((Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 66).

Moral and intellectual leadership requires that “an ensemble of ‘ideas' and 'values' be

shared by a number of sectors […]. Intellectual and moral leadership constitutes,

according to Gramsci, a higher synthesis, a 'collective will', which, through ideology,

becomes the organic cement unifying a 'historical bloc'” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p.

67). The counter-hegemonic struggle is a political process, which involves

disaggregating the civilization, and constructing a new one, or a new “historical bloc”

(Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 70). “Thus,” Laclau and Mouffe note, “the identity of the

opponents, far from being fixed from the beginning, constantly changes in the

process” (2001, p. 70).

Democracy and Agonistic Pluralism

This transition towards recognising the contingency of actors’ identities, constantly

changing in a process of disaggregation and reconstruction as opposed to fixed in an

economic base, is what Laclau and Mouffe call the “Gramscian watershed” (2001, p.

65). In Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, however, an ambiguity concerning the

status of the working class persists (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 70):

On the one hand, the political centrality of the working class has a historical,

contingent character: it requires the class to come out of itself, to transform its

own identity by articulating to it a plurality of struggles and democratic

demands. On the other hand, it would seem that this articulatory role is

assigned to it by the economic base - hence, that the centrality has a necessary


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character. (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 70)

Laclau and Mouffe claim that any “essentialism of the totality and of the elements”

(2001, p. 192) must be rejected in order to arrive at the radical political and theoretical

potential of hegemony. This is where the post-structuralist background of the authors

takes them far beyond Gramsci. As Mouffe stated in an interview, the idea of

hegemony in HSS cannot be understood independently of their thesis about the

discursive construction of reality: “reality is not given to us; meaning is always

constructed. There is no meaning that is just essentially given to us; there is no

essence of the social, it is always constructed” (Carpentier & Cammaerts, 2006, p.

967). Thus, the identity of actors in a process of social change, are equally

constructed, and the fragmentation and antagonism among these actors is constitutive

of the struggle, not an inconvenient moment in history to be overcome by looking for

an underlying, essentially given unity. This “open, unsutured character of the social”

(Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 192) has to be fully accepted in order to evolve towards a

radical democracy, or “a form of politics which is founded not upon dogmatic

postulation of any 'essence of the social', but, on the contrary, on affirmation of the

contingency and ambiguity of every 'essence', and on the constitutive character of

social division and antagonism” (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001, p. 193).

This form of politics, founded upon the constitutive character of antagonism, is what

Mouffe has termed “agonistic pluralism” (Mouffe, Laclau & Castle, 1998, n. p.).

Agonistic pluralism, to Mouffe, allows us to think about democracy in a way that

differs from both the traditional liberal conception — democracy as a negotiation

among interests — and from the type of model put forward by authors like Habermas


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(Mouffe et al, 1998, n. p.). To Habermas, the aim of democracy is creating consensus,

which is only possible if people manage to leave aside their particular interests and

think rationally. “However,” Mouffe adds, “while we desire an end to conflict, if we

want people to be free we must always allow for the possibility that conflict may

appear and to provide an arena where differences can be confronted. The democratic

process should supply that arena” (Mouffe et al, 1998, n. p.). Agonistic pluralism is to

be an alternative for the “post-political” trend, in which “consensus at the centre”

dominates politics in most liberal-democracies, and deprives citizens of an agonistic

debate, where choices can be made between real alternatives (Mouffe, 2013, p. 234).

Mouffe claims that the central thesis of HSS is “that social objectivity is constituted

through acts of power. This implies that any social objectivity is ultimately political

and that it has to show the traces of exclusions which govern its constitution. The

point of convergence between objectivity and power is precisely what we mean by

'hegemony'” (Mouffe, 2002, n. p.).

It is not difficult to see how this translates to mainstream journalism, where

objectivity, the cornerstone of the mainstream journalistic ethos, is ever present. Since

journalistic objectivity always relies on a “common sense” rather than to strictly

empirical rules (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 11) mainstream media often produce and

reproduce the “consensus at the centre” of the political arena. The notion of

objectivity within mainstream media will be further discussed in section 3.1.3, but in

order to go beyond a criticism of mainstream media, we need to take a closer look at

what the contingency of actors’ identities, and the constitutive character of

antagonism, implies for the interaction between counter-hegemonic actors. In section

3.2., it will be argued that the counter-hegemonic force of media is too often seen as a


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tool to create and disperse the narrative of individual social movements, which often

leads to their retreat in discursive bubbles rather than to agonistic debate. In order to

do that, we have to look at the role of social movements and their relation to

alternative media.

2.2 Social Movements and Alternative Media

(New) Social Movements

Social movements can be seen as the most important actors of social change, and their

diversity is often discussed in terms of “old” vs. “new” social movements. This

division arose as theorists were confronted with the development of new forms of

collective action during the 1960s (Melucci, 1980, p. 199). According to Laclau and

Mouffe, “new social movements” is an unsatisfactory term which groups together a

series of movements which are extremely diverse — the struggle of feminists, anti-

racists, of ethnic, regional and sexual minorities, etc. — the only common

denominator being their differentiation from workers or class struggles (2001, p. 160).

Laclau and Mouffe discuss two dominant tendencies of new social movement

theorists, which they see as incompatible with their position:

The first approaches the nature and efficacy of these movements within a

problematic of the privileged subject of socialist change: thus, they are

considered either as marginal or peripheral with regard to the working class

(the fundamental subject in the orthodox view) or as a revolutionary substitute

for a working class which has been integrated into the system (Marcuse).

Everything we have said so far, however, indicates that there are no privileged


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points for the unleashing of a socialist political practice; this hinges upon a

'collective will' that is laboriously constructed from a number of dissimilar

points. Nor can we agree, therefore, with the other dominant tendency in the

discussion of new social movements, which consists in a priori affirmation of

their progressive nature. The political meaning of a local community

movement, of an ecological struggle, of a sexual minority movement, is not

given from the beginning: it crucially depends upon its hegemonic articulation

with other struggles and demands.

(2001, p. 87)

Considering other social movements as marginal or peripheral is, of course, not

unique to working class movements, although their historical position has perhaps

engrained the idea of a privileged position the deepest. Today we could perceive the

multitude of new social movements as a landscape in which some (including, but not

only, class) struggles loom larger than others. Because of their earlier historical

unfolding, and their (as a result) often more privileged position in society, these social

movements have been confronted with the way their struggle intersects with those of

others. Brah & Phoenix (2004, p. 76), for instance, note how throughout the 1970s

and 1980s the concept of “global sisterhood” within feminism was critiqued for its

failure to fully take on board other power relations such as race, sexuality, and social

class. From these and earlier critiques, the concept of intersectionality arose, which

signifies “the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when

multiple axis of differentiation – economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and

experiential – intersect in historically specific contexts. The concept emphasizes that


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different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure

strands” (Brah & Phoenix, 2004, p. 76).

Whereas intersectionality is a crucial concept, it does not eviscerate the problematic

of the privileged subject of socialist change. Too often, it is used as a label which

coats the implicit desire to unite all “peripheral” struggles under the umbrella of one’s

own struggle; to redefine the anticolonial struggle as a matter of class struggle, or to

incorporate LBGTQ- and antiracist movements into intersectional feminism, etc. This

desire, to unite the fragmented social movement landscape, stands in opposition to

Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001, p. 132) insistence on the autonomy of social movements,

which is both necessary for struggles to be able to develop without interference, as

well as for antagonism as such to emerge. On the other hand, Laclau and Mouffe

insist that the political meaning of social movements is not given from the beginning

(cf. supra). There is no “a priori affirmation of their progressive nature” (cf. supra),

their political meaning “crucially depends upon its hegemonic articulation with other

struggles and demands” (Laclau & Mouffe 2001, p. 87). To explore the role of

alternative media in social movements’ hegemonic articulation with other struggles

and demands, it is important to explore the ways in which they are similar to and

different from social movements.

Alternative Media from a Social Movement Perspective

There is a natural symbiosis between social movements and alternative media. On one

hand, social movements often depend on alternative media, or they create their own

alternative media in order to spread their message (Carroll & Hackett, 2006, p. 83).

On the other hand, alternative media often financially depend on social movements


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(Downing, 2010, p. 391). According to Coyer en Dowmunt (2011) that symbiosis

makes sense, since both social movements and alternative media strive for social

change. For this reason, Downing (2008) argues that social movements and

alternative media theories be better integrated. Carroll en Hacket (2006) partly pick

up this task by looking at alternative media through a social movement theory lens.

Resource mobilization theory (RMT) defines the relationship between alternative

media and social movements as instrumental and strategic (Carrol & Hackett, 2006, p.

91. Gamson en Wolfsfeld (1993, cited in Caroll & Hackett, 2006, p. 92) describe the

relationship between media in general and social movements as one of asymmetrical

dependence: social movements depend on media in order to access an audience, more

than media depend on social movements for content. In this light, the production of

alternative media by social movements is a strategy aimed at reducing their media

dependency (Caroll & Hacket, 2006, p. 92)

Carrol and Hackett (2006) point here to a first difference between “conventional”

activism and media activism: the first form uses media as a strategic tool to

accomplish other political goals, whereas media activism sees media as a goal in and

of itself. This distinction is crucial in order to rearticulate the role of journalism as “an

arena where differences can be confronted” (Mouffe etal, 1998, n. p.) rather than as a

mouthpiece for social movements. On the other hand, one of the most important

differences between alternative media and social movements which Carrol and

Hacket (2006, p. 97) point to is the lack of collective identity within alternative media

organisations. Interviews with media-activists show that they see themselves as a

meta-movement across several subject-specific movements (Carrol & Hackett, 2006,


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p. 97). This shows that another important trait can be found among alternative media,

which points to their potential as an institution which confronts the agonistic positions

of individual social movements. Once the difference between a social movement and

an alternative medium becomes hazy — when it is conceived of as a tool for

individual social movements — it serves a different function than what is intended in

this thesis. Once a medium forms a clear collective identity, it will resort to “group-

internal communication (Poerksten, 2011, p. 195). Group-internal communication

refers to a discourse that is only understandable within that group (Poerksten, 2011, p.

195). In short, although it is important to highlight the natural synergy between social

movements, in the light of agonistic pluralism it is equally important to show their

distinction. Group-internal communication, it must be noted, is an important way of

creating autonomous counter-hegemonic discourses. The function of alternative

media can never be a matter of either group-internal or group-external

communication, but in the light of hegemonic articulation between autonomous social

movements, the latter function should not be ignored.

The importance of an institution that allows for agonistic debate among social

movements, rather than a plethora of autonomous discourses by individual social

movements, can be illustrated by Durac’s (2015) analysis of the “Arab Spring”. Durac

analyses the Arab uprisings from a social movement perspective, and states that

diverse coalitions of social movements, or “movements of movements” grew, which

…

… were, however, able to agree only on minimal demands — the fall of the

regime and the establishment of a new political order based on vague


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references to justice and dignity. The breath and diversity of these coalitions

made the successful achievement of their core demands for regime change

possible. However, the persistence of ideological cleavages within them made

agreement on the post-regime change political order near impossible. (Durac

2015, p. 253)

As has been established, the problem of persisting ideological cleavages cannot be

solved, according to Laclau and Mouffe (1985), by looking for an essentially given

unity that underlies these cleavages. The antagonism these cleavages point to, is

constitutive of the struggle. What seems important here is that the realisation of two

demands — regime change and the establishment of a new political order — had to be

achieved within the same chaotic and volatile moment of the Arab revolts. These

demands, however, are of a very different nature. This different nature needs to be

specified in order to arrive at a definition of journalism as a radical antagonistic

democratic institution.

The Adversary and the Alternative

To better understand the problem of a broad coalition of movements that can only

agree on minimal demands, a distinction has to be made between the demands Durac

lists. The fall of the regime is a demand that centers on an adversary: the regime.

Laclau and Mouffe (1985, p. xvii) state that it must be acknowledged that radical

politics requires drawing new political frontiers, meaning that an adversary must be

defined. In the light of Durac’s analysis of the Arab revolts, it must be noted that

Laclau and Mouffe point to an “important differential characteristic” (1985, p. 131)


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between what the authors call advanced industrial societies and the periphery of the

capitalist world:

[I]n the former, the proliferation of points of antagonism permits the

multiplication of democratic struggles, but these struggles, given their

diversity, do not tend to constitute a 'people', that is, to enter into equivalence

with one another and to divide the political space into two antagonistic fields.

On the contrary, in the countries of the Third World, imperialist exploitation

and the predominance of brutal and centralized forms of domination tend from

the beginning to endow the popular struggle with a centre, with a single and

clearly defined enemy. Here the division of the political space into two fields

is present from the outset, but the diversity of democratic struggles is more

reduced [emphasis added]. (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 131)

HSS was originally published in 1985, several decennia before the onset of the Arab

revolts, and the idea of a more reduced diversity of democratic struggles in “the

periphery” cannot be reconciled with Durac’s analysis of the Arab struggle. To Durac,

the diversity of movements lies at the heart of both its successes and its failures.

Whereas it could be argued that this points to a progressive integration of the Arab

world into a global capitalist system, blurring the lines between the advanced

industrial “centre” and the “periphery”, a more interesting problem surfaces here,

relating to the different nature of the demands during the Arab revolts.

Which brings us to the second demand of the “Arab Spring”: establishing a new

political order, a demand based on vague references to justice and dignity according

to Durac (cf. supra). This demand centers on the creation of an alternative, rather than


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an adversary. Laclau and Mouffe mention that this step is crucial as well, claiming

that defining an adversary “is not enough. One also needs to know for what one is

fighting, what kind of society one wants to establish” (1985, p. xix). The problem

seems to be that it is not quite clear what the order is of the several requirements

Laclau and Mouffe define — defining an adversary, establishing a chain of

equivalence, an agonistic debate, and formulating an alternative. This results in

confusion about which requirements are necessary conditions to the others.

To make matters concrete, it will be argued that an institutionalised form of agonistic

debate is necessary in order to achieve a chain of equivalence, and/or to define an

alternative or adversary. This will lead to the claim that the role of alternative media

needs to be redefined in terms of a radical democratic institution in which agonistic

debate takes place. In other words, the role of the media as a “fourth estate” of

democracy should not be shed aside as an invention of the “post-political” liberal

democratic state. On the contrary, journalism has to be embraced as a crucial

institution of democracy, and it too must be radicalised. This is where it becomes

important that the media have taken a backseat in the work of Laclau and Mouffe. In

the case of Mouffe, this has resulted in narrowing down the matter of radicalising

democratic institutions to a matter of representation in parliaments and governments.

In a 2017 lecture at Boston University1, Mouffe (2017, para. I) states that the ever-

present possibility of antagonism means that representative institutions play a crucial

role in allowing for the institutionalisation of the conflictual dimension. She argues

that the problem of institutionalising the conflictual dimension cannot be remedied

through purely horizontalist practices of civil society struggles (Mouffe, 2017, para.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&1 This recent lecture synthesises many of the theories developed by Mouffe


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I). She insists that this does not mean that these horizontalist practices have no place

in an agonistic democracy:

&

I am convinced that the variety of civil society struggles and the multiple

forms of activism that exist around them, that’s valuable […] What I contend

is something different, what I contend […] is that those practices cannot

provide a substitute for representative institutions, and that it is necessary to

establish a synergy between those practices and other more institutional forms

of struggle. If the protest movements refuse to establish alliances with

traditional channels (…) then their radical potential will be lost.

(Mouffe, 2017, para. I)

&

Mouffe (2017, para. I) continues to clarify this synergy by giving the example of

Spain, in which Indignados represented the more horizontalist practices, whereas the

party Podemos brought this struggle into the Spanish representative institutions. The

process Mouffe proposes can be further unraveled by comparing the Spanish situation

to Durac’s analysis of the Arab uprising. In the “Arab Spring”, the creation of an

adversary (the regime), of an alternative (establishing a new political order) and the

agonistic debate were all condensed into the revolutionary momentum of the uprising.

The alternative was the necessary negative of the adversary; it had to fill the vacuum

of the toppled regime. In the case of Spain, and of liberal democracies in general, the

relation between the adversary and the alternative is different:

Understood as refusal of the post-political order, I suggest that current protests

can be read as a call for a radicalization of&liberal democratic institutions, not


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for their rejection [emphasis added]. What they demand are better, more

inclusive forms of representation. To satisfy their desire for a ‘voice’, existing

representative institutions have to be transformed [emphasis added] and new

ones established, so as to create the conditions for an agonistic confrontation

where the citizens would be offered real alternatives.

(Mouffe, 2013, p. 230)

As the radicalisation of liberal democratic institutions is not a matter of rejecting

them, but transforming them, these representative institutions cannot be the adversary.

Thus, the alternative cannot be the negative of the adversary, as both of them are, to

an extent, “representation”. In the Arab situation, a total lack of representation within

the regime had to be replaced with a new political order. In the case of liberal

democracies, a different adversary must be found, which allows for the process of

radicalising or transforming existing representative institutions. In the case of the

Arab revolts, any institutional form of representation is absent during the complete

process. In the case of liberal democracies, the process of radicalising the already

present representative institutions can only take place after an agonistic confrontation.

This agonistic confrontation requires creating an adversary, or an “us” vs. “them”

(Mouffe, 2017, para. II). As will be argued, the problem seems to lay with the lack of

an already existing representative institution in which this adversary can be negotiated

through agonistic debate.

The Missing Institution

Mouffe and Laclau (2001, p. 114) explain that the adversary cannot be determined in


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terms of a simple empirical referent, like “men” or “white people”:

Take, for example, a discourse which presents men, qua biological reality, as

the enemy. What will happen to a discourse of this kind when it is necessary

to develop antagonisms like the struggle for the freedom of expression or the

struggle against the monopolization of economic power, both of which affect

men and women?

(Mouffe and Laclau, 2001, p. 114)

It has, however, proven to be difficult to define what this adversary must be, if not a

simple empirical referent. Two closely linked issues are important here, the first being

the matter of reducing the struggle back to a subject-specific struggle, and the second

being the balance between the abstract and concrete nature of the adversary. Mouffe

(2017, para. III) states that the frontier cannot be established in a traditional Marxist

way, as a frontier between the proletariat and the Bourgeoisie. A frontier must be

constructed which is much more transversal, based on a chain of equivalence between

multiple democratic demands (Mouffe, 2017, para. III). The author compares the

creation of the adversary by right-wing populist Marine Le Pen — the immigrants —

to the adversary of left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon — the forces of

neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, according to Mouffe, “construct the ‘us’ in a

much wider way, which includes the immigrants” (2017, para. III). It is not exactly

clear, however, in what way “the forces of neoliberalism” is all that more transversal

as an adversary than “the Bourgeoisie” is. It includes “the immigrants” in the sense

that they are no longer the explicit “them”, but it still only relates to immigrants’

identities in an economical sense. To refer back to the words of Laclau and Mouffe:


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what will happen to a discourse of this kind when it is necessary to develop

antagonisms like the struggle against patriarchy, or racism? The problem with the

concept of a chain of equivalence between social movements, is that it is both a

necessary condition in order to create a transversal adversary, while the adversary is

at the same time a necessary condition for the creation of a chain of equivalence.

In an answer to the question whether the adversary should be a group of people, or a

set of ideas, Mouffe argues that a middle ground must be found between abstract

notions like “capitalism” and “neoliberalism”, notions that are too vague, and a

concrete group of people (Mouffe, 2017, para. V). This brings her to the example of

concrete institutions which are more or less pure embodiments of ideologies;

transnational corporations, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. (Mouffe, 2017, para. V). It

is questionable, however, if institutions can be found that purely embody patriarchy or

racism. But more importantly, it seems close to impossible to find an institution which

embodies neoliberalism, racism, patriarchy, and all other power structures which

social movements struggle against, at the same time. In that sense, the idea of an

adversary ironically brings us back to the issue of finding an “essence of the social”,

or, in this case, an institution which embodies that essence. Perhaps it is not crucial to

Mouffe that the adversary is as transversal as is assumed here, that it is sufficient to

find an adversary that embodies several struggles, but not all of them. But this would

imply a suspension of antagonism, or a temporary “marginalisation” of several

struggles. These marginalised groups would have to wait until the representative

institutions of liberal democracy are radicalised in order to have their voices heard.


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In the case of the Arab revolt, a clear adversary was formulated, what was missing

was a structure in which an agonistic debate could take place about what the new

political order should look like. The case of liberal democracy is different, as these

structures do exist, but they need to be transformed. This transformation, to Mouffe,

depends on a binary agonistic confrontation, or the creation of an adversary, an “us”

vs. “them”. This adversary must be transversal enough, it must be based on a chain of

equivalence between multiple democratic demands, which in turn requires agonistic

debate between a multitude of social movements. As becomes clear, the need for an

agonistic representative institution runs through all the necessary steps towards social

change. Journalism has been overlooked as a potential representative institution,

possibly because it took shape according to a consensus-seeking ideal of democracy,

foreclosing agonistic debate. A second important evolution in journalism is what

Muhlmann describes as the turn to “unifying journalism” (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 6), in

which “newspapers ceased to be simply a forum for the expression of diverse

opinions and became a source of news, even more news, gathered by people who

began to call themselves reporters” (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 1). Thus, journalism, or

mainstream media, has strayed far away from anything that looks like a representative

institution. This does not mean, however, that its radical potential should be shed

aside.

One can wonder to what extent the media count as a representative institution. As

opposed to the parliament, media do not hold any decision-making power. It is clear

that the struggle for representation can never be only a matter of representation

through media. However, it suffices to refer back to Gramsci’s theory of cultural

hegemony to remind us of the importance of non-formal power. The great advantage


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of the struggle for a representative media-institution, is that there can be multiple

media-institutions, which allows for a hegemonic struggle for agonistic representation

prior to the transformation of any other institution. In order to arrive at a notion of

media as an agonistic institution, a closer investigation of how history has impacted

both alternative and mainstream media is necessary.

3. Media and Journalism

In the section which follows, some characteristics of both mainstream and alternative

media will be discussed, in the light of how these characteristics aid or obstruct their

capacity to be an arena for agonistic debate. These characteristics will be discussed

according to the following categories:

1. The level on which the media operate (local/national/global), in terms of

audience, coverage and employees or collaborators;

2. The structure of the organisation, the main focus being the forms of financing;

3. The way these media select and present their topics.

The difference between “mainstream” and “alternative” media continues to be a

debate among researchers. Kenix (2011, p 1-7) speaks of a media spectrum, in which

no clear boundaries can be established as to what counts as “mainstream” or

“alternative”, especially since more recent converged areas of overlap have blurred

the boundaries established by previous research. Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier

(2007, p. 18) speak of “the contingency of the alternative”, since what is considered

“alternative” at one point in time might be seen as “mainstream” at another. These


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authors provide a starting point by stating that present-day mainstream media are

considered to be:

- large-scale and geared towards large, homogeneous (segments of)

audiences;

- state-owned organizations or commercial companies;

- vertically (or hierarchically) structured organizations staffed by

professionals;

- carriers of dominant discourses and representations.

Alternative media can take one or more opposite positions on these

matters:

- small-scale and oriented towards specific communities, possibly

disadvantaged groups, respecting their diversity;

- independent of state and market;

- horizontally (or non-hierarchically) structured, allowing for the facilitation

of audience access and participation within the frame of democratization

and multiplicity;

- carriers of non-dominant (possibly counter-hegemonic) discourses and

representations, stressing the importance of self-representation.

(Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier, 2007, p. 18)

Defining a mainstream “archetype” is much more difficult, since everything which is

not mainstream can be considered alternative, meaning that the alternative category


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displays a much wider variety of media types. In general, the use of “mainstream” and

“alternative” in this thesis will be according to the above characterization by Bailey et

al. (2007), but categorisations that cut across the mainstream-alternative divide — e.g.

Muhlmann’s (2008) unifying vs. decentring journalism —will also be taken into

account. Several examples that challenge the characterisation by Bailey et al. (2007)

will also be discussed.

Up until now, the terms “journalism”, “media” and “the press” have been used

interchangeably. It is important to note that we will be dealing with specific types of

media, the types that publish non-fiction on a regular basis. More precise definitions

can be given, however, most terms surrounding this topic contain certain assumptions

that might have to be left behind in order to rethink their function from a social

change perspective. This hesitance to define the subject might seem redundant, but it

will prove to be fruitful when questioning the assumptions that have been made about

the position of journalism throughout history. In the spirit of Laclau and Mouffe,

awareness about how both the terms and institutions that will be discussed are

articulations and materialisations of ideology, seems in place. Many of the definitions

of “journalism”, “media”, etc., will be discussed in the section “mainstream media”

(cf. 3.1.). This is because most journalism research is almost exclusively Western,

which has lead to generalising definitions of “journalism” and “the” media which in

fact only apply to a Western, mainstream model (De Burgh, 2006, p. xii).


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3.1. Mainstream Media

The difficulty of defining journalism has resulted in a multitude of claims about the

“birth” or “invention” of journalism. Researchers each point to moments in history,

often lying centuries apart, focusing on different characteristics they deem to be

essential. What all of them have in common is an almost exclusively Western

perspective; sometimes made explicit, but more often generalised as being “the”

history of journalism. This Western history does prove to be helpful in defining a

mainstream archetype of journalism. Raymond (2005, p. 5) states that historians have

traditionally taken a telescopic view, identifying a long-term development and

increase in communication throughout the early-modern period. She argues, however

that “[t]he allure of this seamless narrative has elided some of the complexities of

history” (Raymond p.5), which is why some important historical turns must be

highlighted.

Raymond (2005, p. 6) regards the arrival of the first serial and periodical publication

in mid 16th century Europe as the starting point. McNair (2006, p. 28) claims that

journalism was born as a commodity in the cultural marketplace, a vanguard in

exploiting the technologies of text and image production in the lead-up to the

Enlightenment. Chomsky (1994, p. 4) highlights the industrialisation of the press

during the 19th century as an important demarcation, as it put the “mass” in mass

media. Carey (2007, p. 6) makes a distinction between news/reporting and journalism,

the former having a longer history, and the latter being an invention of the eighteenth

century. To Cary, journalism is “the keeping of a serial biography of a community in

a more or less fixed and regular way (monthly, weekly, daily, now hourly or moment

by moment)” (2007, p. 8). These different “births” of journalism each lay bare the


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historical roots of several main characteristics of the mainstream journalistic

archetype; a serial publication, a mass-produced commercial product, aimed at a

specific community. For Carey (2007, p. 4), forming and sustaining particular

communities is the principal task and consequence of journalism. As will be discussed

in section 3.1.1., the author articulates this community function in terms of nation,

public, and democracy.

In relation to the message of journalism, Carey states that journalism emerged

“through a long and complex process, particular to each society, in which fact and

fiction need to be separated and reporting and social commentary distinguished from

other forms of writing” (2007, p. 12), as readers originally could not always tell if

they were reading “a factual fiction or fictional factual (…) a novel or a nouvelle, (…)

history or fiction or journalism” (2007, p. 7) Although Carey (2007, p. 7) mentions

that the problem of where fiction ends and journalism begins is still with us, the

image of a society progressively learning to untangle fact and fiction, risks

oversimplifying the matter. In A Political History of Journalism (2008) Muhlmann

synthesises the previously discussed developments — technological advancements

allowing to produce journalism as a commodity for an ever-growing community —

with the notions of ‘fact’ and ‘objectivity’. For Muhlmann (2008, p. 2), the 1880s

marked a beginning of modern journalism in all Western democracies, in which

“’facts’ acceptable to all” (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 6) became the new commodity. The

precise nature of unifying journalism will be elaborated in the sections, but for now it

is important to note that the process of unifying stands in stark contrast to Mouffe’s

notion of agonistic pluralism. “Unifying” journalism is not a matter of either

commercialization, industrialisation, objectivity or community-creation; it is about


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how all these aspects and many more intertwine, in a way that is not unique to

mainstream media alone.

3.1.1. Level of Operation: The State and the West

The Liberal Democratic State

According to Carey, journalism originally developed “as a device for calling into

existence an actual social arrangement, a form of discourse and a sphere of

independent political influence” (2007, p. 12) The author mentions that informing and

educating the public, and serving as a watchdog on the state, were functions that were

only assumed in later periods (Carey, 2007, p. 12). Carey refers to Anderson’s

“Imagined Communities” (1983), in which Anderson analyses how print capitalism

acted as the agent creating “the imaginary community of the nation”. Printing turned

the nation into “a uniform reading space that hooked together small knots of speaking

citizens […] who in the main never meet, never know one another in any ordinary

sense, but who nonetheless identify with one another” (Carey, 2007, p. 12). The

author continues by stating that the intertwining development of journalism, the

public sphere, and the nation-state have to be emphasised to sustain a basic point:

The origins of journalism are the same as the origins of republican or

democratic forms of governance—no journalism, no democracy. […] In the

modern world, in an age of independent journalism, this is a controversial

assumption, for it seems to commit journalists to the defense of something, to

compromise their valued nonpartisanship. It claims that journalists can be

independent or objective about everything but democracy, for to do so is to


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abandon the craft. About democratic institutions, about the way of life of

democracy, journalists are not permitted to be indifferent, nonpartisan, or

objective. It is their one compulsory passion, for it forms the ground condition

of their practice

(Carey, 2007, p. 13)

Two important aspects emerge here, the first being that to Carey, “democracy” and

the democratic forms of governance, democratic institutions, and the democratic way

of life, are one and the same. In short, democracy and the liberal-democratic state are

synonyms here, reducing the possibility of mainstream journalism transforming the

representative institutions of liberal democracy to almost zero. It could be argued that

this is indeed an archaic notion that has become controversial, and that many

mainstream journalists no longer adhere to this principle. They might deem it crucial

in their role as watchdog on the state to challenge democratic institutions or the

democratic way of life. However, the extent to which mainstream journalism’s very

existence depends on its role within the liberal-democratic state, shows that it is

difficult to untangle about what aspects of “democracy” a journalist is or is not

allowed to be independent or objective. Which brings us to the second important

aspect, namely that the frontier drawn between democracy and “everything but

democracy” is one of subjectivity vs. objectivity, partisan vs. nonpartisan. The notion

of objectivity in journalism will be elaborated in section 3.1.3., but through Laclau

and Mouffe we have already established that objectivity in a strict sense does not

exist, making the division between democracy and everything else even more

obscure.


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Thus, the relationship between the mainstream journalistic archetype and the liberal-

democratic state is one of complex mutual dependency. This is, however, an

archetype, and the notion of “no journalism, no democracy” is translated differently

by various media on the mainstream-alternative continuum. The community that

journalism forms and sustains is not to all media synonymous with the population of a

nation; nor is their definition of democracy always equal to liberal democracy. More

specifically, a process of globalisation of communication has resulted in a number

media that reach an audience which stretches far beyond the borders of any nation.

This global communication confronts us with the two sharply contrasting views on

globalisation discussed by Curran and Park:

Cultural theorists write with infectious enthusiasm about globalization as a

process that is increasing international dialogue, empowering minorities, and

building progressive solidarity. Political economists, on the other hand, write

about globalization as a capitalist victory that is dispossessing democracies,

imposing policy homogenization, and weakening progressive movements

rooted in working-class and popular political organizations.

(Curran & Park, 2000, p. 42)

More complex definitions of globalisation exist, but what is of interest here is the

extent to which the globalisation of communication is in fact Western globalisation.

The optimistic discourse of cultural theorists cannot be seen separately from the

neoliberal globalisation of capital, which is why the commercial nature of mainstream

journalism will be discussed in section 3.1.2. For now, the focus will be on the extent

to which any cross-border community fostered by mainstream media is in fact a


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Western community.

&

The West vs. the Rest

In the light of forming and sustaining communities, the contributions made by Saïd

(1978) and Mudimbe (1988) in criticizing the “ideologies of Otherness” that were

developed during Western imperialism and European colonization (Mazrui, 2005, p.

68) cannot go unnoticed. Saïd’s “Orientalism” (1978) traces “the invention of the

Orient” back to the Western search for the Other, and Mudimbe traces “the invention

of Africa” back to Western explorations (Mazrui, 2005, p. 68). The impact of

Othering on foreign reporting was and remains immense, and takes many different

forms that are not restricted to mainstream media alone (Mahieu & Joye, 2018). What

is most relevant here is the way in which the other constitutes the “us”, and thus

serves as a mechanism of forming and sustaining a community. Othering does not

only articulate the identity of the other in the eyes of the “us”, but also articulates the

identity of the “we” as such (Saïd, 1978). This mechanism provides the created

community a border where the frontier does not coincide with the frontiers of a

nation. Apart from the creation of communities in terms of nation, othering has

provided the means to create a community in terms of “the West”.

3.1.2. Organisational Structure: Commercial and Hierarchical

Commercial


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The commercial structure of mainstream media stems from the idea that the

commercial sphere was the space outside of the state where public debate could take

place, a “marketplace of ideas”2. Depending on who is asked, this belief was

originally true until it became corrupted (Habermas, 1989), or was a fiction from the

very start (Herman & Chomsky, 1994). Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing

Consent (1994) is a clear analysis of how the commercial nature of mainstream media

is incompatible with its supposed democratic function. The authors propose a new

propaganda model, arguing that “it is much more difficult to see a propaganda system

at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent” (Herman &

Chomsky, 1994, p. 1). The model Herman & Chomsky propose consists of five

essential ingredients, or news “filters”:

(I) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of

the dominant mass-media firms;

(2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media;

(3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government,

business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and

agents of power;

(4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and

(5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism

(Herman & Chomsky, 1994, p. 2)

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&2 According to Gordon (1997), this expression is often used in reference to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859). However, the metaphor was never used in On Liberty, and describes a superficial equivocation between “free speech” and “free market” which finds no support in Mill’s writing. &


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Each of these filters in its essence a critique of market forces, even those, which seem

to go beyond that. The elaboration of these filters in Manufacturing Consent is of

course much more fine-meshed, but the authors themselves mention that their analysis

is in fact “a ‘free market’ analysis, with the results largely an outcome of the

workings of the market forces” (Herman & Chomsky, 1994, p. xiii). The authors do

mention that market forces cannot explain everything:

In most cases, however, media leaders do similar things because they see the

world through the same lenses, are subject to similar constraints and

incentives, and thus feature stories or maintain silence together in tacit

collective action and leader-follower behaviour

(Herman & Chomsky, 1994, p. xiii)

Media leaders seeing the world through the same lenses, is a matter of hegemony

within the media, or a hegemonic conception of what journalism is. This is of course

intrinsically linked to how media produce and sustain hegemony in the wider sense,

but it must be highlighted in order to avoid a simplistic free market analysis. An

analysis purely based on market forces, could lead to the conclusion that the

alternative is simply non-commercial media. The impact of neoliberalism on the

media cannot be underestimated, but it has to be made clear that this is also a matter

of neoliberal ideology forming the conventions within mainstream journalism.

Alternative media do not always escape these conventions by resorting to a non-

commercial model.


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In reference to alternative media, Herman and Chomsky start off their analysis by

discussing how a radical press emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century,

which “reached a national working-class audience” and “unified the workers because

it fostered an alternative value system and framework for looking at the world” (1994,

p. 3). What the authors suggest here is the emergence of a counter-hegemonic value

system based on a working-class identity. In the light of the current landscape of

multiple, antagonistic social movements, it should be noted that a return to a value

system based on the working class as the privileged subject of socialist change, is no

longer possible nor desirable. That being said, Herman and Chomsky (1994, p. 4)

state that this radical press was deemed a major threat by the ruling elites, who

initially attempted to squelch this threat through coercive efforts such as libel laws,

prosecution, and imposing taxes to raise costs. As state intervention was not effective,

it was abandoned in favor of the idea that the market would enforce responsibility

(Herman & Chomsky, 1994, p. 4). Market forces proved to be effective: the rise in

scale of newspaper enterprise made capital costs skyrocket3, loosening rules fostered

media concentration, and the radical press was outcompeted to the extent that they all

but completely disappeared (Herman & Chomsky, 1994, p. 5).

To grasp the extent to which this industrialisation of the media impacted journalism,

Herman and Chomsky’s second “filter” — advertising as the primary income source

of the mass media (cf. supra) — deserves a closer look. A common belief in terms of

media as a “marketplace of ideas”, is the assumption McNair portrays in this assertion

that the commodity status of journalism “need not produce declining standards, if

high standards of objectivity are the market standard” (2005, p. 34). He argues that as

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&3 In England, for example, the start-up cost of a newspaper multiplied by fifty between 1837 and 1867 (Herman & Chomsky, datum p. 4)&


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the information marketplace becomes more competitive, “the commercial value of

reliably accurate information increases, not decreases, and old-fashioned objectivity

remains a key marketing tool for global news brands like the BBC and CNN”

(McNair, 2005, p. 34) The extent to which “high standards of objectivity” arose

exactly because they were a key marketing tool, will be discussed in section 3.1.3.,

but what is important here is how advertising distorts this belief:

Before advertising became dominant, the price of a newspaper had to cover

the costs of doing business. With the growth of advertising, papers that

attracted ads could afford a copy price well below production costs. […] For

this reason, an advertising-based system will tend to drive out of existence or

into marginality the media companies and types that depend on revenue from

sales alone. With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system

in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers’ choices influence media

prosperity and survival. (Herman & Chomsky, 1994, p. 14)

To summarise, with advertising as the primary income source, the product is not

media messages, and the buyer is not the audience; the product is the attention of the

audience, and the buyers are the advertisers. Instead of a marketplace of ideas or

information, we are dealing with a marketplace of the attention of possible

consumers. As was mentioned (cf. section 1), part of the recent media crisis was the

rise of the internet, initiating a massive proliferation of media outlets all competing

for advertising revenue. This resulted in a relative decline of advertising income for

those media, but not in a decline of dependency on advertisers. Whereas some media

— especially those more on the alternative side of the continuum — have attempted


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to return to a model where a paying audience covers business costs, many others have

had to deal with an increased dependency on, or even convergence with, advertisers.

It is Hardy (2017, p. 14) who speaks of a convergence between media and marketing

communications, which affects journalism at all levels. This convergence is marked

by “new, hybrid PR–journalistic arrangements as third-party content farms and in-

house branded content units produce and process stories and other materials on behalf

of marketers. Sponsored content overlaps with broader marketisation efforts, such as

articles written in response to popular search” (Hardy, 2017, p. 14). To illustrate that

this is development runs through the whole spectrum of mainstream outlets; De

Standaard and De Tijd, both considered to be Flemish “quality outlets” as opposed to

more commercially oriented Flemish media, have resorted to native advertising and

in-house branded content units respectively.4 One result of this evolution is that it

deepens the extent to which the audience is the product rather than the consumer.

Hardy mentions that “[t]he deal, whereby advertising paid for journalism to attract

readers (…) has been unraveling since the early 1990s as marketers have found more

direct, information-rich and cost-effective ways to track and target consumers online”

(2016, p. 12). As media and marketing communication converge, tracking and

targeting has become a common strategy for news media as well. Media are no longer

only selling the attention of their readers, they are selling information about them as

well.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&4 Native advertising is advertising which conforms to the design and format of journalistic articles and is integrated into the medium’s usual content. The in-house branded content unit referred to is Content Republic, acquired in 2012. &


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In sum, the revenue model based on advertising has been problematic from the very

beginning, and is taking on even more dangerous forms. Mainstream media have all

but dug their own grave by letting their audience grow used to “free” journalism. This

evolution is masked by a progressive convergence between media and marketing,

meaning that as businesses these media tend to survive, whereas their journalistic

nature slowly fades away.

Beyond the West

The description above mostly relates to how privately owned media tend to function

in western liberal democracies. Although this model has spread across the globe in the

wake of neoliberal globalisation, this perspective cannot be applied directly to the

global south. Hallin (2000, p. 296), for example, mentions that the critical political

economy perspective was primarily developed to critique the liberal democratic

media system, and that it falls short of understanding the Mexican situation. The

assumption that market forces inevitably push toward depolitization and a narrowing

of debate is too simple according to the author (Hallin, 2000, p. 296). “Under certain

historical conditions”, Hallin states, “market forces may undermine existing structures

of power, providing incentives for the media to respond to an activated civil society”

(2000, p. 296). This, to a certain extent, has been the case in Mexico, but as Hallin

adds:

It is certainly possible, however, that as the newspaper market develops more

fully in Mexico, right-of-center commercial papers will eventually drive out of

the market not only the old officialist press, but also the independent papers


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started by journalists, which may be able to survive only in a period of

political transition when interest in politics is high and the commercial press

not yet fully developed. […] As neoliberalism triumphs, the role of the state

recedes and that of the market expands, critical political economy may

become more rather than less relevant to understanding the Mexican media

(Hallin, 2000, p. 297-298)

The possible future relevance of the critical political economy perspective should not,

however, be an excuse to shed aside specific national particularities. A thorough

analysis of each of these particular situations unfortunately falls beyond the scope of

this thesis, but in general it must be mentioned that commercial media can be a force

of counter-hegemony in countries where the media are otherwise firmly in state

hands. In the case of China, Ma claims that “groups and conglomerates, in the critical

eye, are agents of exploitation. But in the Chinese context, their economic

independence can weaken political control and enhance editorial autonomy” (2000, p.

69). The author adds that the irony of this situation is that the authority tolerates these

conglomerates because they are a way to control the chaotic free competition, and to

limit the proliferation of minor newspapers (Ma, 2000, p. 69). Thus, whereas both

conglomerates and minor newspapers can weaken political control, we do see a

reflection of the process described by Herman and Chomsky, in which media

concentration effectively silences smaller outlets. Ma (2000, p. 78) concludes by

admitting his reservation concerning a liberal market model:%

%

I tend to concur with the critical view that the market limits social discourses

and reinforces dominant ideologies. However, the multifaceted effects of the


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market on the media scene in China need careful theoretical interpretation.

Allowing the situation to speak for itself, the market does serve as a liberating

force, no matter how exploitative it can sometimes be.

(Ma, 2000, p. 78)

In states like Mexico and China, something of the Habermasian ideal of the Bourgeois

public sphere tends to re-emerge. Nothing, however, ascertains that these often

premature forms of media liberalisation will not evolve in the same direction as they

have in liberal democracies. Whereas privately owned media may function as a

counter-hegemonic force in some instances, they are in no case a globally acceptable

alternative. What the Mexican and Chinese situations illustrate, however, is that

formulating a proper alternative cannot be a simple matter of making media non-

commercial.

3.1.3. Topic selection and presentation: New, Near and Objective

Objectivity

As was mentioned, the journalism historian Carey (2007, p. 12) claims that

journalism emerged through a long and complex process of separating fact from

fiction, and reporting and social commentary from other writing. This image suggests

that fact and fiction were essential categories that had to be discovered by an often

confused readership. The reality is that journalism took part in the creation of the

notions “fact” and “objectivity”. This evolution is, of course, closely linked to

scientific developments, but in the field of journalism, it was equally a matter of

creating a commodity that could be sold to a large readership:


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“As many studies have shown, it was the penny press and its modern

conception of ‘news’ that gave rise to the journalistic concern for factual

accuracy […] This requirement of the ‘popular’ press of the nineteenth

century to provide true information, accurate and ‘objective’ facts, was closely

linked to its concern to unify; it clung to the ‘facts’ so that it could bring

together readers who might well have different opinions on a subject, and

hence reach the common denominator of an increasingly large readership. The

spectacular growth of this readership led, therefore, to ‘the triumph of “news”

over the editorial and of “facts” over opinion, and created ‘the journalist’s

uneasy allegiance to objectivity’” (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 6)

Journalism’s uneasy allegiance to objectivity gradually erased all notions of

antagonism. Herman and Chomsky’s analysis of media industrialization (1994) needs

to be placed in the light of this evolution. The watershed that took place in the second

half of the nineteenth century was not only a matter of outcompeting radical media

through liberalisation and concentration, it was also a fundamental change in the

nature of journalism itself. What replaced the radical working class media was not a

similar type of media dispersing a different worldview; it was the creation of

journalism as “‘facts’ acceptable to all” (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 6), or the

depoliticization of journalism.

Wien (2005) argues that we could see the requirement for objectivity in disseminating

news as the journalistic paradigm, adding that “it is one thing to operate with

objectivity as a beacon, and something else to operationalise objectivity in the

everyday task of journalism” (p. 3). The author argues that most journalism continues


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to use a binary, positivist concept of objectivity: “To be subjective is to say that one’s

own assessments (attitudes and values) have influence on knowledge. To be objective

is to say that one is content to present that which is not affected by one’ s own

assessments, i.e., the facts” (Wien, 2005, p. 4). The problem, according to Wien

(2005, p. 5), is that journalists must choose a context in which to place those facts,

and this choice is a subjective one. Muhlmann (2008, p. 10) states that most

researchers have emphasized the great epistemological poverty of the concrete rules

regarding objectivity. One example the author gives, is the requirement observed by

Gaye Tuchman (1978) to give readers material or verified facts:

Often, rather than verify a fact ‘A’ stated by a person ‘X’, the journalist

regards as a fact the statement ‘X said A’. Under the appearance of rigour, an

obvious bias emerges, because if this statement is no more than a worthless

opinion (A is untrue), it would be questionable to give it a place in the article.

[…] Tuchman observes that journalists often try to get round this difficulty of

which they are aware, by giving at least one other opinion (‘Y said B’). But

she is quick to point out that this addition does nothing to solve the problem,

in reality: a new opinion is reported as a ‘fact’, when its content has no more

been verified than that of the first.

(Muhlmann, 2008, p. 11)

By having to deal with opinions in a positivist conception of objectivity (one is either

objective or subjective, and the journalist must be the former), these opinions are

turned into reality. In reference to Herman and Chomsky’s third propaganda “filter”

(cf. supra), the opinions which are rendered objective are often those of government,


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business, and “experts” funded and approved by them. This brings us to Mouffe’s

claim that “the point of convergence between objectivity and power is precisely what

we mean by 'hegemony'” (Mouffe, 1998, n. p.). Poerksten, through a constructivist

approach to journalism, reformulates the same idea as follows:

Whoever successfully manages to establish their designations and descriptions

of reality, whoever manages to make their interpretative terms appear to be the

only legitimate interpretations and to universalise the group-linguistically

negotiated system of semantics, will establish their view of the world — will

in this way create the reality that will become the standard point of orientation

for themselves and everybody else.

(Poerksten,&2011,&p.&97)&

This creation of reality lies not only in spiral towards hegemonic articulation by elite

sources. By presenting opinions in the straight jacket of facts, any antagonism is

muted. If ‘X said A’ and ‘Y said B’ are facts, they cannot be confronted with each

other in any real sense, since facts are not supposed to contradict each other. Such a

representation of different positions is a mere assessment that they exist. It is clear

that the positivist notion of objectivity is incompatible with any conception of

journalism as an agonistic representative institution. It must be noted, however, that

journalists are of course not unaware of this problem. Whereas many op them still

cling to objectivity as a god term, others have tried to reformulate the notion of

objectivity in terms of factuality, impartiality, truth, balance, non-partisanship, or

neutral representation (Wien, 2005, p. 5). This effort has mostly led to a cul de sac of

avoidance:


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Journalism thus faces the problem of having to define a problematic concept

and doing so in a manner which one often does with such concepts: it attempts

to define the concept with the help of a bunch of equally problematic

concepts, which only contributed to increasing the quagmire of problematic,

undefined concepts within journalism.

(Wien, 2005, p. 8)

How this evolution relates to Mouffe’s “post-political condition” of “consensus in the

center” (Mouffe, 2017, para. II) precisely, is a complex matter. It is clear that the

interdependency between journalism and liberal democracy, combined with

journalism’s uneasy allegiance to objectivity, plays a role here, but it is difficult to say

to what extent. Mouffe (2017, para. II) points to neoliberalisation as the force behind

our post-political situation. A positivist paradigm — in neoclassical economic models

and technocratic decision-making — runs through neoliberalism as well, but

interpreting the notion of objectivity in journalism as purely an effect of neoliberal

ideology, would be an oversimplification. Nor can it be argued that the 19th century

ruling elite consciously liberalised the media in order to achieve depolitization, as that

would overestimate their capacity to predict a long and complex process towards

unifying journalism. What is beyond doubt is that a true “radicalisation” of the media

in a Mouffian sense has to seriously grapple with the problem of objectivity.

3.2. Alternative Media


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As was mentioned, the contingency of the alternative, or the extent to which

alternative media are defined in a negative relationship towards mainstream media

(Bailey et al, 2007, p. 18; Carpentier, 2007, p. 4), makes it difficult to give a clear

definition. The diversity among all non-mainstream media prevent us from

establishing an archetype from which to draw general conclusions. Carpentier (2007,

p. 1-2) distinguishes four theoretical approaches according to whether alternative

media5 are (1) media- or society-centered, or (2) essentialist or relationalist (cf. table

in Appendix II). The essentialist approaches focus on the autonomous identity of

alternative media, whereas the relationalist approach centers on their identity in

relation to other identities (Carpentier, 2007, p. 2). These four frameworks for

theoretically interpreting the role of alternative media often mirror the self-subscribed

functions of alternative media, making them an interesting starting point.

The first approach, media-centered and essentialist, sees alternative media as “serving

the community” (Carpentier, 2007, p. 2). Referring back to Casey who argues that the

principal task and consequence of journalism is to form and sustain communities (cf.

supra), the problem with this essentialist approach seems to be that it assumes a priori

existing communities. This reduces the importance of journalism’s role of forming

communities, and turns journalism into a matter of serving already formed

communities. The second approach, media-centered and relationalist, focuses on

alternative media as an alternative to the mainstream (Carpentier, 2007, p. 2).

According to Carpentier, this approach puts more emphasis on “the discursive relation

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&5&Carpentier&speaks&of&community&media&as&an&overarching&designation.&The&fact&that&Carpentier&(2007)&has&been&adopted&in&an&almost&identical&way&in&Bailey&et&al.&(2007)&except&for&replacing&“community&media”&with&“alternative&media”,&shows&that&equivocation&is&not&problematic&when&referring&to&alternative&media&in&general.&


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of interdependency between two antagonistic sets of identities” (Carpentier, 2007, p.

1). In relation to Laclau and Mouffe (2001) the mainstream media here serve as an

adversary; the “us” vs. “them” are articulated as “mainstream media” vs. “alternative

media”. The same problems discussed in section 2.2. surface here as well. The

adversary seems to function as a temporary suspension of antagonism among

alternative media, leading to a tendency to (1) see the existence of individual or

subject-specific counter-hegemonic media as sufficient, and (2) validate media

practices which, in the words of Muhlmann (2008, p. 164), “unify the dominated” (cf.

infra).

The third approach, society-centered and in between essentialist and relationalist,

centers on alternative media as part of civil society (Carpentier, 2007, p. 1). This

approach hinges on how civil society should be defined, and as Carpentier (2007, p.

6) mentions, reductionist definitions of the civil society’s relation to the state and

market tend to make this approach essentialist rather than relationalist. It risks

defining civil society as an essentially given unity, depending on its relation to state

and market, making it incompatible with the “open, unsutured character of the social”

(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 192). Which brings us to the final approach, which is

society-centered and relationalist. This approach, according to Carpentier (2007, p. 6),

radicalizes and unifies (critiques on) the second and third approach. It builds on

Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987, p. 19) metaphor of the rhizome, which is based on the

juxtaposition of rhizomatic and arbolic thinking: wheras the arbolic is linear,

hierarchic and sedentary, the rhizomatic is non-linear, anarchic and nomadic

(Carpentier, 2007, p. 6). It should be noted that in the case of the rhizomatic approach,

very little examples can be found of alternative media reflecting this approach in their


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practice. One “fascinating example” according to Carpentier (2007, p. 12), Indymedia,

will be extensively discussed below.

A second important dimension is the different definitions of “community”. Carpentier

presents us with a summary of reconceptualisations of “community” that attempt to

surmount its geographical and ethnic confines (2007, p. 10-12) (cf. table in Appendix

III). The first reconceptualisation supplements the geographical with the non-

geographical, by interpreting community as “community of interest” or “virtual or on-

line community (Carpentier, 2007, p. 11). The second reconceptualisation

supplements the structural/material with the cultural; communities can be

interpretative, imagined, or communities of meaning (Carpentier, 2007, p. 11). The

author here refers to Anderson’s (1983) concept of the imagined community,

previously addressed by Carey in relation to the history of mainstream media (cf.

supra). In the case of mainstream media, the communities that are created surmount

both the geographical and the structural/material. The “imagined community” that

was created, however, was an apolitical one. The community was unified through

“’facts’ acceptable to all” (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 6). The hegemonic meaning that was

construed, was hidden under the shell of objectivity. This confronts us with the fact

that the creation of an “alternative community” is not only a matter of supplementing

the notion of community with the non-geographical and the cultural. A third

reconceptualisation in terms of antagonism seems necessary.

3.2.1. Level of Operation: Local

Carpentier mentions that “[o]ne of the major restrictions CM [community media]


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have to deal with is the confinement to the local, trapping CM on one side of the

local-global dichotomy” (Carpentier, 2007, p. 9). The author continues by arguing

that this can be explained by the emphasis placed on the local by traditional media-

centered approaches, as “[t]his reduction structurally weakens CM in comparison to

large-scale — and sometimes global — mainstream media [and] renders the CM’s

potentially enlarged societal role virtually unthinkable” (Carpentier, 2007, p. 10).

Here, Carpentier seems to either equivocate between the theoretical approaches of

alternative media theorists and the practical approaches of actual alternative media

organisations, or seems to overestimate the extent to which academic frameworks

impact media practices. Theory and practice are of course mutually influential, but the

problem of alternative media’s confinement to the local cannot be reduced to a matter

of theory rendering an enlarged societal role virtually unthinkable. Carpentier of

course recognises some of the more practical limitations, but it must be highlighted

that the theoretical possibility of “rhizomatic” alternative media should be confronted

with its practical possibility. Many of those practical limitations will be discussed in

sections 3.2.2. and 3.2.3.

The value of Carpentier’s contribution (2007) lies in its connection to the

reinterpretations of “community” that were previously discussed. The “promising

example” of Indymedia however, while clearly subverting the confinement to the

local in various ways, shows some limitations here. Indymedia originated from

several hundred media activists coming together in 1999 to cover the anti-WTO

protests in Seattle (Platon & Deuze, 2003, p. 338). This resulted in the creation of the

first Independent Media Centre (IMC) website (Platon & Deuze, 2003, p. 338). From

that point forward, local IMC’s emerged across the globe, resulting in 140 local IMC


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websites (e.g. bxl.indymedia.org) and one global website (indymedia.org) in 2004

(Mamadouh, 2004, p. 482). The first important note is that in 2004, those 140

websites were unevenly distributed across the globe, the vast majority (81%)6 being

located in the global North (Mamadouh, 2004, p. 491). Whereas Indymedia clearly

manages to surmount local limitations, this global spread mirrors the global spread of

mainstream media. Secondly, it seems like today the global Indymedia website has all

but died out completely. Between 2013 and 2018, eight articles were published on the

“features” page, the most recent three (2014-2018) each being about local IMC’s

struggling to survive (https://indymedia.org/). It is important to mention that many

local IMC’s are still very active, but there is little more than a shared name that points

to their global interconnectivity.

The community Indymedia created, was a global community of activists. Daubs

mentions that “while there is ample evidence to suggest Indymedia operated quite

well as an organizing tool for grassroots social and political movements, there is little

evidence that Indymedia has regular and significant impact outside activist groups”

(2017, p. 376). Platon and Deuze (2003, p. 338) add that “[w]hile Indymedia is not a

conscious mouthpiece of any particular point of view, many Indymedia organizers

and people who post to the Indymedia newswires are supporters of the so-called ‘anti-

globalization’ (alternative globalization, anti-corporatization) movement”. Exploring

precise definitions of anti- or alternative globalization falls beyond the scope of this

thesis, but it seems like what held these IMC’s together was a common adversary:

globalisation. Only, this adversary is very abstract, which is problematic according to

Mouffe (2017). What made their collective identity tangible, was their activism.

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While activism might be a materialisation of gobalisation, it is a very specific one.

The vast majority of the articles published through Indymedia, are (and were) about

local protest, strikes, boycotts, etc. While this may foster a global solidarity and prove

to be an important organising tool, it is not very helpful in terms of an agonistic

debate.

What was discussed through Indymedia, was rarely the problem with globalisation

itself, but rather the “events” of expressing dissent against globalisation. The analysis

of the problem was assumed, which restricted the community to those who shared this

unspoken assumption. What held together the Indymedia community was a concealed

consensus. Perhaps an agonistic debate could have emerged if Indymedia had found a

way to make globalisation itself the “news event”. The origins of Indymedia — their

dissatisfaction with how mainstream media covered the 1999 anti-WTO protests —

gave rise to a community that focused on protest as a news event, whereas the

problem also lies with mainstream media being incapable of covering the very

reasons for such a protest. The problem with defining alternative media as an

alternative to the mainstream is that they may manage to supplement mainstream

media (covering protests), but at the same time may replicate many other conventions

(continuing to see journalism as covering the “new” and “near”). Protests against

globalisation are far from the only — let alone the most important — materialisation

of globalisation, but perhaps they were the only events that could be discussed by a

medium that does not confront the constitutive antagonisms within the anti-

globalisation movement.


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3.2.2. Organisational Structure: Non-commercial and Horizontal

Horizontalism

The organisational structure of alternative media relates to distinction between

democratisation in vs. through media (Bailey et al., 2007), the problem being that

they do not always coincide easily. Sandoval and Fuchs (2010) point to this problem

by arguing against defining alternative media as participatory media. While the

authors agree that participation can have a positive effect on the people involved in

the process of production (i.e. democratisation in media), they doubt that participatory

media can effectively challenge the dominant discourse (i.e. democratisation through

media) (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 142). Because they reject professional

organization processes, participatory media tend to remain small-scale and marginal

(Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 143). Small-scale media do aspire to democratisation

through media, “[b]ut a statement that does not reach the masses is not a significant

statement at all, only an individual outcry that remains unheard and hence ineffective”

(2010, p. 143).

Whereas there are many forms of participatory media, it entails a certain

horizontalism between the different roles in media production (journalists,

interviewees, editors, etc.) As mentioned before, horizontalist practices cannot

provide a substitute for representative institutions according to Mouffe (2017). In

horizontalist practices, there is no representation as ‘speaking for’ as in politics;

representation in the sense of an elected official representing his or her constituents.

Horizontalism entails that everyone is on an equal level, and that each individual self-


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represents. To any organisation that exceeds the small-scale or marginal, this is

evidently problematic for pure practical reasons. But the problem with horizontalism

runs deeper than pure impracticality. As Freeman mentions in The Tyranny of

Structurelessness (2013), there is no such thing as the structureless group:

Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of

time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The

structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly

distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it

will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the

people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents,

predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. […] [T]he idea

becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned

hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because

the idea of “structurelessness” does not prevent the formation of informal

structures, only formal ones. […] As long as the structure of the group is

informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and

awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not

know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or

suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are

not quite aware.

(Freeman, 2013, p. 232-233)

In the case of uprisings or protests, horizontalism may remain harmless and even

prefigure a radically equal society. In a large, long-lived organisation subscribed to


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the complex task of journalism, such horizontalism will inevitably result in the

informal domination of some over others. As Freeman mentions, there is nothing

inherently bad about organization and structure (2013, p. 232). “They can be and

often are misused, but to reject them out of hand because they are misused is to deny

ourselves the necessary tools to further development” (Freeman 2013, p. 232). Formal

organisation can be an effective tool to counter the informal hegemonic organisation

of our society, as the example of positive discrimination shows.

Non-Commercial

Sandoval en Fuchs’ (2010) extend this criticism to the non-commercial nature of

alternative media:

Gaining public visibility requires financial resources for producing and

distributing media products. Under capitalism it is difficult to obtain these

resources without making use of commercial mechanisms of financing like

selling space for advertisements […] Under capitalism the ideal model of

alternative media can hardly be politically effective. In order to advance

alternative media strategies that support societal transformation and

emancipation, the strict dichotomy between capitalist mass media and

alternative media cannot be successfully practiced

(Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 143)

Whereas Sandoval & Fuchs’ criticism of horizontalism seems grounded, this critique

cuts many corners. First off, whereas the rejection of participatory media in the sense

of horizontally organised media can be motivated because it might reproduce existing


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power structures, this criticism comes down to a capitulation to those power structures

(i.e. we live “under capitalism”, meaning we cannot avoid capitalist financing). It is

undeniable that it is difficult to obtain resources without using commercial

mechanisms of financing, but the extent to which those commercial mechanisms

impact journalism cannot be underestimated (cf. section 3.1.2). According to

McCann, “[a]n ‘alternative’ media project, which is not in some way, even

informally, linked into a wider effort to overthrow capitalism isn’t really alternative at

all” (McCann, 1999, geciteerd in: Harcup, 2003, p. 358). Sandoval and Fuchs (2010,

p. 147) recognise that the influence of financiers “certainly constantly endangers

alternative media that employ commercial mechanisms of financing”, but they argue

that “it is a difficult, but a very important and not impossible task for alternative

media to maintain independence at least at the level of content from interests that can

represent their economic base” (Sandoval & Fuchs, 2010, p. 147). The distinction

between the level of content and the “economic base” opens up the possibility of

reconciling alternative media and commercial financing mechanisms. However, by

placing advertisements next to journalistic articles, the interests of the economic base

quite literally become the content of a publication. Economic determinism cannot be

replaced by the illusion that the “economic base” can be neatly separated from other

levels of an organisation.

Sandoval and Fuchs do make a point in the sense that many alternative media

interpret “non-commercial” as generating no income at all. They often spread their

content for free and rely on volunteers for its production (e.g. Indymedia). There is

nothing inherently commercial or capitalist about asking money for a product or

service, things only become problematic when profit is involved. This is an


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oversimplification of course, as a strict frontier between commercial and non-

commercial is not easily drawn. What seems important is that any structure entails a

certain dependency, whether it be dependency on capitalist financing, dependency on

a paying audience, or dependency on the free time, skills and energy of volunteers.

The notion of “independent” media obscures this fact, as what goes underneath it is

often a dependency on state subsidies or other funds. Dependency is unavoidable,

what it comes down to is whether the dependency is problematic or not. In that sense,

depending on a paying readership seems the least problematic, except for the fact that

it is close to impossible to attract a paying readership of any considerable size without

any start-up capital. Finding a source of start-up capital that does not entail a

problematic form of dependency is definitely an arduous task.

Social Capital

One interesting example is the Dutch medium De Correspondent, which raised 1.7

million through crowdfunding in 2013, and now continues to generate income

through paying memberships (Pfauth, 2017, n. p.). This medium is more towards the

mainstream end of the continuum, and whereas an analysis of how this translates to

their content is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is important to note that the initiators

of De Correspondent were reputated journalists. As they mention in an article about

their crowdfunding campaign, having the right ambassadors was crucial

(medium.com). These ambassadors were …

…[j]ournalists that are known for the kind of journalism you want to provide.

Because people might not know what you mean with ‘good journalism’, but


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they do recognize good journalists. If they want to see more work that’s like

your ambassador’s, they’ll back your project.

(Pfauth, 2017, n. p.)

Good ambassadors is not only a matter of a good marketing trick, it is about what

could be called social capital. The initiators of De Correspondent were established

journalists that could back their promises with the weight of their reputation. Apart

from that, a crowdfunding campaign entails its own cost, which might not have been a

big hurdle for Dutch, highly educated reputable journalists, but it could be for many

others. Social capital is not only relevant in the case of crowdfunding, relying on

volunteers also necessitates a pool of potential volunteers that have enough time, tools

(e.g. computer, recording devices, etc.) skills and knowledge (e.g. from higher

education) to produce qualitative journalism. In sum, many creative solutions to the

non-commercial problem can be imagined, but these will mostly benefit those on the

high end of the social ladder.

3.2.3. Topic Selection and Presentation: Unifying the Dominated

As to the matter of topic selection and presentation, much has already been

established. A medium which is confined to an already-existing commutity,

geographically and ethnically confined, will discuss topics which are relevant to that

community in a way that speaks to that community. While it must again be stressed

that this is an important form of creating counter-hegemonic narratives, it gravely

limits the possibility of an agonistic debate between social movements. Indymedia

broke outside of that restricted community, but the events discussed by IMC’s were


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still mostly relevant on a local level, which might be one of the reasons the global

website of Indymedia is gradually dying out. The focus on activism may have created

a global community of interest, but it did not provide a way to discuss the underlying

motivations for activism on a global scale. Part of the problem here lies in a

reproduction of the mainstream notion that journalism has to address what is “new”.

As globalisation is a structural problem, covering protests and other activist practices

is not sufficient. In fact, these protests are a way of turning globalisation into a news

event, meaning that Indymedia journalists-activists had to both create the news event,

to then report on it. On a local and perhaps sometimes supra-local level, Indymedia

was an important tool for organisation, but the role of journalism must go beyond

that.

Which brings us to what Muhlmann has termed the temptation to “unify the

dominated” (2008, p. 164). In between the geographically and ethnically confined

community media and the once global Indymedia, alternative media such as

Democracy Now! and De Correspondent do manage to create a community.

Muhlmann (2008, p. 164) discusses the French daily newspaper Libération founded in

1973 with the intention of mounting a challenge to the dominant journalism. The

temptation to unify lies in seeing the union of the dominated as more important than

the decentring of the dominant (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 166), or in the words of Laclau

and Mouffe (2001), to value the reconstruction of the counterhegemonic force over

the disaggregation of hegemony (cf. supra). Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the four co-

directors of Libération (Muhlmann, 2008, p. 165), nonetheless seemed very aware of

the importance of constitutive antagonism. In the launching press conference of

Libération he articulates this concern:


61&

He speaks above all of the importance of making visible the ‘contradictions’

that exist within the population, in order to avoid what he calls the temptation

of ‘leftist journalism’, in-turned, motivated by a sectarian spirit. It seems that

Sartre was conscious from the beginning of what might be called the risk of

clannishness, of a retreat into an ‘us’ of the dominated who will no longer

confront anything that might imperil their unity. He urges the editors to be as

open as possible to the multiplicity of voices that emanate from the people.

(Muhlmann, 2008, p. 166)

Muhlmann argues that Libération did not manage to fulfill this ambition, the main

problem being that they “claim[ed] to fuse with an instituted ‘other’”, thus again

rendering themselves as subjects invisible:

The key to the decentring method is therefore the acceptance that one is

always located in a singular person. Decentring journalists see from

somewhere, from a singular place, their own, not from everywhere, or from

wherever they ‘ought’ to see. By accepting this situation, they can try to

change it, sow conflict in it, and work on it. As soon as they claim to travel in

otherness as easily as they would travel in a ‘we’ […], they betray the

singularity of their gaze, which is the keystone of their decentring method.

(Muhlmann, 2008, p. 193)

Muhlmann’s unifying and decentring models of journalism provide crucial insight for

journalists, but the author’s focus on the individual practice of the journalist does not


62&

provide any answers on an organisational level. The decentring journalist may sow

conflict in the “us”, but it does not show how those outside the “us” may challenge it.

Conclusion

&This thesis was an attempt at redefining the role of journalism in a process of social

change. Mouffe and Laclau’s HSS (2001) brought us to redefine journalism as a

potential radical democratic institution. The notion of antagonism is crucial here;

journalism should provide an arena where differences can be confronted. The genesis

and evolution of mainstream media has shown that it cannot provide such an arena.

The obstructions that plague alternative media, are however manifold as well. The

original aim of this thesis was to formulate several concrete measures that would

enable alternative media to evolve towards an agonistic representative institution.

However, the complex effects of the conclusions drawn from HSS (2001) on

communicative theory, made this an aim that proved too ambitious. Any possible

proposal based on this literature study would remain too frivolous or utopic.

Presenting mainstream and alternative media as a choice between the devil and the

deep blue sea might do unjustice to the important role of alternative media in their

current form. They are crucial forums for producing counter-hegemonic narratives.

But the expression rings true in a more methaphorical way. Whereas the

characteristics of mainstream media radiate from a hegemonic archetype which

obstructs counter-hegemony in a forceful way, alternative media seem to remain stuck

in producing a vast, unknown landscape of counter-hegemonic narratives which rarely

intersect in an agonistic way. Further exploring the notion of journalism as a potential

radical democratic institution, for example by analysing the similarities and


63&

differences between media institutions and more direct representative institutions,

would be fruitful here. Representation runs through all steps of media production, and

a simple application of a parliamentary model is not possible. But in the face of

antagonism as constitutive to social struggle, it could be a worthwile undertaking to

explore the more complex ways these institutions interact.


64&

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Appendix I: partial transcription of Which Future for Democracy in a Post-political Age? A Lecture by Chantal Mouffe (2017) Paragraph numbers have been added for reference. &44:10&R&59:26&(Lecture&by&Chantal&Mouffe)&&[I]&But&there&is&another&view&of&pluralism,&and&this&is&the&one&that&I&personally&belong&to&(…)&and&it’s&in&the&fact&that&all&those&values&can&never&be&reconciled.&If&you’ve&got&pluralism,&you&will&have&antagonism.&And&this&is&of&course&the&argument&I’m&referring&to&here.&If&we&start&from&a&view&that&(…)&pluralism&entails&the&everRpresent&possibility&of&antagonism,&then&of&course&we&realise&that&representative&institutions,&by&giving&form&to&this&division&of&society,&they&play&a&crucial&role&in&allowing&for&the&institutionalisation&of&the&conflictual&dimension.&That,&for&me,&is&another&reason&why&we&can’t&have&pluralist&democracy&without&representation.&But&here&I&want&to&insist,&something&which&is&quite&important,&that&this&allowing&for&the&institutionalisation&of&the&conflictual&dimension&requires&that&there&exists&an&agonistic&confrontation.&Because&if&you&don’t&have&an&agonistic&confrontation,&then&this&conflictual&dimension&cannot&be&institutionalized.&In&my&view,&what&constitutes&the&central&problem&with&our&current&postRpolitical&model,&is&precisely&the&absence&of&such&an&agonistic&confrontation&(…)&And&of&course&this&is&not&going&to&be&remedied&through&purely&horizontalist&practices,&which&is&of&course&what&the&other&perspective&pretends.&But&here&I&want&to&say&something&because&I&don’t&want&to&be&misunderstood.&I’m&not&at&all&arguing&here&that&the&type&of&activism,&which&takes&place&in&those&movements&in&the&horizontal&level,&is&something&that&has&no&place&in&an&agonistic&democracy.&In&fact,&I&am&convinced&that&the&variety&of&civil&society&stuggles&and&the&multiple&forms&of&activism&that&exist&around&them,&that’s&valuable.&Not&only&to&raise&consciousness,&and&to&bring&to&the&fore&issues&that&are&neglected&(…),&but&also&because&they&provide&##&for&the&cultivation&of&different&social&relations.&(…)&What&I&contend&is&something&different,&what&I&contend&is&that&those&practices,&besides&the&fact&that&they&always&contain&a&dimension&of&representation&(…),&is&that&those&practices&cannot&provide&a&substitute&for&representative&institutions.&And&that&it&is&necessary&to&establish&a&synergy&between&those&practices&and&other&more&institutional&forms&of&struggle.&If&the&protest&movements&refuse&to&establish&alliances&with&traditional&channels&(…)&then&their&radical&potential&will&be&lost.&And&this&is&something&which&I&think&it’s&for&me&quite&important,&and&in&fact&it&is&part&of&a&debate&that&is&taking&place,&just&the&case&of&Spain&for&instance,&of&course,&the&Indignados&was&very&much&against&those&forms&of&representation&(…)&and&when&Podemos&arised&(…)&Podemos&is&not&the&party&of&Indignados,&and&many&people&of&Indignados&were&not&at&all&in&agreement&with&the&fact&that&some&form&of&institutionalization&will&take&place.&In&fact,&there&is&still&a&debate&today&in&Spain&(…)&It&is&a&debate&which&is&still&important&in&the&left,&the&debate&between&horizontalism&versus&verticalism.&For&me&it‘s&really,&if&we&are&thinking&of&having&some&impact,&it&is&necessary&to&transform&institutions,&necessary&to&articulate&this&dimension&with&some&form&of&channeling&towards&the&institutions,&some&form&of,&for&instance,&in&Podemos&they&call&that&the&development&of&a&war&machine,&an&electoral&war&machine&(…).&So,&let’s&come&now&to&left&wing&populism.&&&


69&

&[II]&So&far&I&have&argued&that&to&address&the&crisis&of&representative&democracy,&what&is&called&for&is&the&formulation&of&a&progressive&project&offering&an&alternative&to&the&current&postRdemocratic&condition.&A&condition&which,&I&remind&you,&is&the&product&of&the&hegemony&of&neoliberalism.&Well,&it’s&not&the&place&to&enter&into&the&content&of&such&a&project,&but&I’d&like&to&say&something&about&the&kind&of&political&movement&that&the&success&of&such&a&project&requires.&And&here&my&claim&is&that&it&should&take&what&I&call&the&form&of&leftRwing&populism.&Here&I&insist&on&something,&(…)&when&I&use&the&term&populism,&of&course&I&do&not&use&it&in&the&term&in&which&it’s&used&by&the&people&who&want&to&##&it,&not&demagogy.&Here&I&follow&the&definition&which&is&given&by&Ernesto&Laclau,&for&him&populism&is&the&way&to&establish&a&political&frontier,&is&a&way&to&establish&a&distinction&between&us&and&them,&which&of&course&is&what&politics&is&about,&and&exists&in&establishing&the&usRthem&in&terms&of&the&people&against&the&establishment,&the&oligarchy.&That’s&what&populism&is&about.&And&in&fact,&I&think&that&in&our&condition&of&postRdemocracy,&if&we&want&to&reRestablish&the&democratic&core&of&liberal&democracy,&it&can&only&be&done&through&the&true&development&of&a&leftRwing&populist&movement&that&is&constructing&the&frontier&in&a&populist&way&(…).&I&am&saying&that&because&of&course&there&are&some&people&who&will&also&say,&yes&we&need&to&reRestablish&the&distinction&between&left&and&right,&and&will&agree&with&me&in&that&we&need&to&fight&against&postRpolitics,&but&they&consider&that&one&can&still&reRestablish&it&to&create&parties,&make&parties&of&the&left&really&really&recover&their&identity,&so&nothing&really&new&is&##&they&still,&for&instance,&need&to&establish&the&frontier&in&the&traditional&way&in&which&it&is&established&between&left&and&right.&And&here&my&argument&is&that&this&does&not&work&anymore.&Because&of&transformation&of&capitalism&under&neoliberalism,&there&are&many,&in&the&sense&that&for&instance,&no&it’s&not&only&as&far&as&you&are&workers&in&a&factory&that&you&are&affected&or&submitted&to&the&logic&of&capitalism.&We&are,&all&of&us,&in&a&sense,&really&subjective&to&the&logic,&so&there&is,&the&us&of&the&collective&will&that&is&going&to&be&organized,&is&much&more&transversal,&it&can&bring&together&around&the&idea&of&what&I&call&a&collective&will,&many&more&groups&than&groups&which&were&traditionally&associated&with&the&left.&&&[III]&And&also,&I&think&that,&and&here&I&have&already&referred&to&that,&what&we&need&is&to&establish&a&synergy,&so&it&just&cannot&be&under&the&form&of&the&traditional&party,&even&if&the&party&is&radicalized.&We&need&to&try&another&form&of&organization,&more&of&the&type&of&what&can&be&called&a&partyRmovement,&in&the&sense&of&establishing&a&synergy&between&the&the&social&movement&and&the&party&form.&This&is&definitely&one&of&the&questions&which&is&new&about&the&left&wing&populist&project.&But&I&think&what’s&important&to&realise&here,&is&that&what’s&at&stake&in&this&leftRwing&populist&project,&is&the&creation&of&a&collective&will,&#&to&the&articulation&of&what&we&call&in&Hegemony&and&Socialist&Strategy,&a&chain&of&equivalence&among&the&series&of&democratic&demands.&Democratic&demands&that&exist,&there&are&a&multiplicity&of&democratic&demands&existing&in&our&societies,&and&they&need&to&be&brought&together,&articulated&together&under&the&creation&of&a&collective&will.&But&I&insist&here&again,&a&collective&will&that&will&be&transversal,&that&will&not&be&expressing&the&interests&of&people&because&of&their&place&in&the&relation&of&production.&Because&this,&of&course,&the&difference&between&a&populist&way&to&constructing&a&frontier&and&##&the&traditional&Marxist&way,&is,&Marxists&


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construct&the&frontier&between&the&proletariat&and&the&Bourgeoisie.&Today,&a&political&project,&one&to&really&radicalise&democracy,&cannot&construct&the&frontier&in&that&way,&it&must&construct&a&frontier&which&is&much&more&transversal,&and&this&is&what&I&call&you&know&a&populist&frontier.&So,&articulation&between&the&horizontal&and&the&vertical.&(…)&To&resume&a&little&bit&my&argument&here,&is&that,&of&course,&if&we&want&to&escape&postRdemocracy,&one&of&the&main&things&we&have&to&do&is&break&with&the&postRpolitical&consensus,&reRestablish&again&an&agonistic&debate,&and&that&requires&creating&a&new&political&frontier,&because,&here&I&insist&on,&again,&for&me,&politics&has&got&necessarily&to&do&with&the&foundation&of&a&frontier&between&us&and&them.&So&we&need&to&reRestablish&a&frontier,&but&we&need&to&reRestablish&it&in&a&populist&way.&And&here&of&course&you&will&understand&that&I&use&the&term&populism&in&a&positive&way,&contrary&to&most&of&the&people&who&present&populism&as&a&perversion&of&democracy,&or&a&pathology&of&democracy.&In&fact,&I&think&that&for&me&populism&is&a&necessary&component&of&democracy.&Because,&democracy&after&all&comes&from&the&Greek&demos%kratos,&the&power,&the&sovereignty&of&the&people.&So&without&construction&of&a&people&you&can’t&have&a&democracy.&And&if&&you&accept&to&call&the&construction&of&the&people,&the&dimension&of&###&people,&the&populist&dimension,&then&of&course&it&is&central&to&democracy.&&[IV]&So&I&think&that&instead&of&rejecting&the&term&populism&(…),&my&argument&is&that&we&need&to&reclaim&the&term&populism,&we&need&to&say&yes,&of&course&we&are&populists,&we&want&to&radicalise&democracy&and&want&to&create&a&people.&So&I&think&that&of&course&it’s&very&important&to&leave&aside&this&negative&understanding&of&populism.&But&it’s&evident&also&that&there&are&different&forms&of&populism.&And&that,&for&instance&you&say,&ok,&populism&is&about&establishing&a&frontier&between&us&and&them,&but&who&is&going&to&be&part&of&the&us,&and&who&is&going&to&be&part&of&the&them?&Of&course,&you&can&have&different&forms&of&populism,&the&us&can&be&constructed&in&a&way,&and&that&for&instance&is&the&case&of&Marine&Le&Pen&in&France,&an&etnoRnationalist&way,&the&us&is&only&the&nationals,&and&the&them&the&immigrants,&that’s&a&rightRwing&populist&way,&but&you&can&also&construct&the&us&in&a&much&wider&way,&which&includes&the&immigrants,&and&in&which&for&instance&the&them&is&the&forces&of&neoliberalism.&This&is&for&instance&the&way&in&which&JeanRLuc&Mélenchon&in&France&constructs&the&us&and&the&them.&So&there&is&really&a&big&difference,&while&we&can&all&accept&that&it&makes&much&more&sense&to&construct&the&populist&frontier&today,&given&the&condition&of&the&development&of&capitalism,&we&need&also&to&be&aware&of&the&fact&that&this&populist&frontier&can&be&constructed&in&many&different&ways,&so&what&I&am&arguing&here&is&in&fact&for&the&construstruction&of&the&frontier&in&a&populist&leftRwing&way,&this&I&think&is&for&me&absolutely&central,&and&to&articulate,&to&federate&a&series&of&democratic&demands&in&order&to&create&a&collective&will.&(59:26)&&1:08:40&R&1:13:29&(Interview&by&Sofia&Perez)&&[V]&SP:&I%would%like%to%ask%you%a%question%about%the%need%to%construct%an%us%and%a%them,%which%you%think%is%fundamental%for%a%successful%left4populist%movement.%And%it%is%one%of%the%things%that%in%actual%practice,%for%instance%in%the%case%of%Spain%which%I’mmost%familiar%with,%is%often%used%by%the%opponents%of%left%populists%to%criticize%


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them,%to%say%that%this%is%a%form%of%demagogy.%And,%so%you%said%today%that%what%is%important,%is%that%the%us%be%a%multitude,%or%include%multiple%people%with%multiple%demands,%but%at%the%same%time%that%it%needs%to%be%anti4establishment.%*CM:&You&need&to&have&an&adversary.&&SP:&Right.%So%the%question%is,%do%you%have%to%construct%the%them%in%terms%of%a%group%of%people,%or%a%set%of%ideas?%*CM:&Well,&it&can’t&just&be&the&set&of&ideas,&it&needs&to&be&an&institution,&for&instance,&let’s&say,&if&you&are&thinking&of&the&them&being&the&forces&of&neoliberalism,&as&is&the&case&in&…&but&to&give&you&an&example,&again&to&the&case&of&France,&the&us&and&the&them&is&constructed,&as&I&was&saying,&by&Marine&le&pen&and&by&JeanRLuc&Mélenchon&is&very&different.&While&Marine&le&Pen&goes&to&the&popular&classes&and&says&you&know,&I&understand&your&problems,&but&those&responsible&for&the&problems,&or&the&them,&is&the&immigrants.&JeanRLuc&Mélenchon&goes&also,&he&takes&account&of&the&demand&of&the&popular&sector,&because&the&main&problem&in&France,&and&not&only&in&France,&is&that&the&popular&categories,&which&are&the&losers&of&globalisation,&is&being&completely&forgotten,&left&aside&by&the&socialRdemocratic&parties&which&are&supposed&to&take&their&interests,&you&know,&so,&this&is,&and&this,&the&success&of&rightRwing&populists&comes&from&that&they&address&their&problems,&so&leftRwing&populism&must&address&those&problems&too,&but&of&course&give&them&another&solution,&in&for&instance&the&case&of&JeanRLuc&Mélenchon,&well&he&says&yes,&I&understand&your&problem,&but&those&responsible&are&not&the&immigrants,&those&responsible&for&that&are&the&forces&of&neoliberalism.&So,&of&course,&it&can&not&be&‘it’s&neoliberalism’,&neoliberalism&is&just&too&vague.&And&it&should&not&be&necessarily&people,&but&it&could&be&an&institution,&for&instance,&some&transnational&corporation,&the&IMF,&so&it&would&be,&it&just&can’t&be&too&abstract,&or,&this&is&for&instance&why&I&find&very&…&and&I’ve&got&a&lot&of&discussion&about&that,&but&you&can’t&just&say&that&the&enemy&is&capitalism,&you&know,&capitalism,&what&…&people,&it’s&so&abstract,&you&can’t&(…)&no,&I&mean,&this&is&not&the&way&to&construct&an&adversary.&But,&an&adversary,&of&course&you&should&not,&at&least&for&a&leftRwing&populism,&say&‘it’s&this&individual’,&because&the&question&is&always&a&structural&reason,&you&know.&So&this&will&be,&well,&I&don’t&know,&to&say&the&World&Bank,&the&IMF,&a&series&of&institutions,&a&series&of&organisations.&It&needs&to&be,&in&fact,&in&between&of&what&you&are&saying.&It&can’t&just&be&one&individual,&it&cannot&be&something&too&abstract,&it&needs&to&be&something&that&the&people&can&more&or&less&begin&to&see&what&…&the&forces&of&neoliberalism.&And&of&course&it&depends&on&the&cases,&because&forces&of&neoliberalism&are&of&course&very&multiple,&and&it&depends&exactly&…&for&some&people,&the&ones&that&affect&them&more&are&some&forces,&the&other&people&…&but&clearly,&it&should&be&in&terms&of&structural&forces,&not&individuals,&and&not&abstract&ideas&like&capitalism.&& &


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Appendix II: table Positioning the four theoretical approaches (Carpentier, 2007, p. 2) &

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Appendix III: Table Defining community (Carpentier, 2007, p. 11) &

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between the devil and the deep blue sea · structuur van de organisatie en de selectie en...

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