Taking Conservative News Seriously

Abstract

Abstract This introductory chapter advocates for a newly concerted interdisciplinary research agenda focused on right-wing or conservative news. It provides a brief history of right-wing media and conservative news in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present. It suggests that scholars of history, rhetoric, political communication, journalism studies, and media sociology ought to converge around the study of historical and contemporary “conservative news cultures,” defined as the consistent practices or patterns of meaning making that emerge between and among the sites of production, circulation, and consumption of conservative news. It notes that journalism studies scholars have a unique role to play in developing the burgeoning subfield of conservative news studies, and suggests that foregrounding conservative news will contribute to long-standing themes in journalism and political communication research, including shifting conceptions of journalistic professionalism, the cultural authority and legitimacy of the press, and the history of political polarization.