Amplifying Extremism - Small Town Politicians, Media Storms, and American Journalism

Within a week, a no-name Republican state representative from a town of 384 people in Illinois catapulted from obscurity to a prime-time appearance on Fox News' Ingraham Angle. This newly empowered politician, Darren Bailey, would go on to steer the pro-business Republican party in Illinois toward extremism. Democratic backsliding emerges across all levels of politics, but the threats posed by small-town politicians have been overshadowed by national-level politicians. This microstudy of a single politician's debut in the public eye showcases a novel approach to media corpus construction that combines proprietary and open databases, aggregated search tools, and targeted searching, and includes local, regional, and national news across digital-first, radio, news publishers, broadcast and cable television, and social media. The Element provides unique insights into how American journalism creates space for small-town extremists to gain power, especially given declines in local news.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Theorizing extremist politicians and the democratic press; 3. Methodology: the case study corpus; 4. The context and structure for Illinois' political and media ecosystems; 5. The rise of Darren bailey: PMP and the political economy of the news industry; 6. Journalists, new norms, and amplifying extremism; 7. Avoiding accidental amplification; References.

Product details

• Authors: Jessica C. Hagman, Jessica Cherese Hagman, Nik Usher, Nik (University of San Diego) Hagman Usher, Nikki Usher, Nikki (University of San Diego) Hagman Usher, Usher Nikki
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 30.06.2025
• EAN: 9781009668781
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0966878-1
• No. of pages: 88
• Series: Elements in Politics and Communication
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Society; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; USA, Media Studies, POLITICAL SCIENCE / General, Press & journalism, Political science & theory, Political leaders & leadership, United States of America, USA, Political science and theory, News media and journalism, Media studies: Journalism, Political leaders and leadership