Abstract
ABSTRACTResearch into the effects of neoliberalism on American news media has found many trends to help explain the market-based changes to news media production over the past few decades. However, such research has largely overlooked the potential effects of neoliberalism on news media audiences themselves. In this article I merge research on the developments in news media production since the rise of neoliberalism with theoretical work on neoliberal subjectivation and rationality in an attempt to understand how we may view news media audiences themselves as being subjectivized by the neoliberal trends, policies, and ideology that have permeated news media production since the 1980s. I argue that the consumer–producer relationship within news media has itself become a neoliberalized relationship that interpellates active consumer audiences and subjectivizes them as “rational” consumers whose news media consumption constitutes an aspect of human capital development. By theorizing this relationship within the context of news media bias, I argue that this neoliberalized relationship can help explain, in part, the modern re-emergence of overtly partisan or biased news media coverage in America.
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