Commercialism and the deconstruction of alternative and mainstream media

Abstract

This chapter aims to deconstruct previous categorisations of alternative and mainstream media by arguing for a convergence of the media spectrum. The collapse of alternative and mainstream distinctions in the media is the result of several contributory factors that are converging across the journalistic profession: the rise of internet technologies; an interdependency of sources and resources; reduced journalism standards met with rising standards of alternative journalism; and increased expectations for transparency as well as ‘relatability’ across all media. This chapter argues that all of these factors are interrelated within an omnipresent commercial ideology that has revised economic mandates across journalism and has led to a widespread collapse of meaningful distinctions between the alternative and mainstream press. It is important to stress that essential differences do remain at the individual level between generalised conceptions of alternative and mainstream media. However, the aim of this chapter is to problematise the common tendency toward mutually exclusive classifications and to investigate the complexities that now exist in categorising our present media system within the context of an omnipresent commercialism found throughout contemporary culture. The ideological pervasiveness of commercialism in media runs counter to pre-vious research, which has argued that alternative media articulate an ideological position (Atton, 2009) that is oppositional to the dominant mainstream (Fenton, 2007; Hamilton, 2000). It has been argued, for example, that the alternative press serve as the central instigator for social change in democratic societies (Atton, 2002b; Curran and Couldry, 2003; Ostertag, 2008) – often in direct contrast to mainstream media (Albert, 2006). Such research has been bolstered by historical examinations of media, which have found prominent differences between alternative media that offer a particular ideological brand of content quite different from mainstream media(Makagon, 2000). These differences have been attributed, in large part, to the commercial imperatives that were seen to be unique to mainstream news operations and subsumed within corporate capitalistic media conglomerations (Atkinson, 2006). In contrast, it has been argued that alternative media have not succumbed to the same capitalistically directed markers of success that have been embedded in the practices of mainstream journalism (Armstrong, 1981). While recognising these stark differences outlined in a portion of the academicliterature, this chapter builds upon research that highlights certain areas of overlapping interests between the mainstream and the alternative press (most notably Atton, 2002a; Downing, 2001; Hamilton, 2006; Dowmunt and Coyer, 2007). This chapter argues that a much more complex and fluid continuum of norms, practices, communication models and ideologies have emerged in response to consumerist mandates, which are increasingly important to a media system driven by a ubiquitous, fundamentally commercial imperative to gain market share across a converged media platform (Kenix, 2011). At the forefront of this examination is the recognition of a mass culture (Bennett,1982), which infers that no media are situated completely outside the ideological mainstream, carrying distinctive identities completely excluded from elite systems of power. Thus, in a hypercommercialised culture, all media coexist in this mass culture regardless of whether the media outlet is directed explicitly towards non-commercial outcomes. Any media, which aim to attract any audience, do so within the same capitalistic framework. It is that framework which is driving the rapidly dissolving boundaries between alternative and mainstream media.