Activists as interpretive communities: rituals of consumption and interaction in an alternative media audience

Abstract

This multiple-method study bridges what John D.H. Downing has called a ‘distinctly disturbing gulf’ between our knowledge of social actors and theories about alternative media by considering the symbolic uses of news in an activist audience and by extending theories of news reading as a ritual act through which social bonds are produced. Because people often read news in private or diffuse situations, reading must be represented to other community members through discourse in order to communicate those information sources – and hence social ideals – they have in common. In interviews, activists downplayed consumption of corporate media, but diaries confirmed that they used a wide range of both alternative and mainstream sources. I propose that this interpretive community achieved its identity in part by rejecting mainstream media, so that performing the role of ‘alternative reader’ served as a marker of individual taste and group belonging.