Commercialism and the Convergence of Alternative and Mainstream Media

Abstract

Copyright: © 2012 Kenix LJ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Media scholarship has spent a great deal of time and energy exploring the differences between what have been labelled alternative and mainstream media. The research in this area has generally been thought provoking and has illustrated the importance of a diverse media system to democracy. However, future scholarship must question and investigate the complexities that now exist in categorizing and understanding our present media system within an omnipresent commercial ideology. While very important differences remain between generalized conceptions of alternative and mainstream media, the convergence of communicative technologies, coupled with changing economic mandates, commercialism, and a rising consumer culture, as well as a raft of other factors, have made the task of differentiating much mainstream and alternative media more problematic. These forces have continued to converge over recent years resulting in a far more homogenized spectrum of what has previously been conceptualized as distinctively mainstream and alternative media [1]. Future research must attempt to better understand what this convergence means for governments around the world, and if there are any potential avenues of interdependent growth that might continue to support democratic governmental systems.