Alternative Media

Overview

Alternative media is a nebulous concept, inasmuch as people who hear the term immediately form an idea in their heads about it, yet they find it difficult to put into words. Furthermore, alternative media is often defined by referring to what it is not: it is not part of the mainstream culture, and it often does not represent the views of the government or of a significant part of the population. Alternative media present views that are frequently considered radical or even subversive, providing an outlet for topics and opinions that are unwelcome elsewhere. Alternative media can include newspapers, magazines, radio and television broadcasts, and Internet platforms such as social media, websites, and blogs. For just about every traditional form of media that exists, there is a corresponding form of alternative media (Lee, 2018).

Alternative media views itself as the voice of the counterculture, meaning that it strives to be outspoken and creative in content that does not align with mainstream tastes and opinions. Historically, devotees of alternative media tended to view traditional media as too conservative and limited in its views, as well as being shackled to the interests of large corporations and government figures. There continues a tendency within alternative media to view society as being controlled by a small group that holds the majority of wealth and power, with the balance of society lacking these assets and generally subject to manipulation and abuse by the privileged elite. Within this view, traditional media are owned by the elite and used to disseminate information that simultaneously keeps the elite in power and disempowers the people (as the majority are referred to) by making them feel unable to effect change and also by lulling them into a state of self-satisfied inertia and distraction (Rauch, 2016).

The role of alternative media within this narrative is to counteract the media of the elites by providing real information to the people, helping them to become aware of how they are being used and ultimately paving the way for a new type of society to emerge, one based on egalitarian principles. While this may appear idealistic at first blush, supporters of alternative media point to many examples of social changes that were initiated by coverage within alternative periodicals. Many of these examples can be more or less convincing, depending largely upon the political leanings of those to whom they are addressed.

Further Insights

Some alternative media exist on a basis that is intended to be permanent or ongoing, as is the case with traditional media, while in other cases alternative media may be produced to focus on a particular issue that has a beginning and end, after which the media will no longer be necessary and will therefore cease production. An example of the latter type might be a newsletter designed to inform voters about the issues being decided in an upcoming election. The newsletter would be published periodically throughout the campaign and then discontinued once the election took place. This contrasts with a traditional media outlet, such as a newspaper, which would provide coverage of the election during the campaign but would continue to be published after the election, covering other issues instead (Lin & Chiang, 2017).

The Internet has brought profound changes to alternative media. Prior to the existence of the Internet, alternative media were much less common than it is in the twenty-first century. This was because alternative media existed in forms similar to traditional media—newspapers, newsletters, radio broadcasts—and thus were as expensive to produce as their traditional counterparts. Only larger cities were home to organizations of sufficient size to produce alternative media regularly over an extended period, so most rural areas did not have access to alternative media. The Internet changed all of this by providing a platform upon which alternative media could be developed and distributed at little or no cost—anyone could start a blog, a bulletin board, or Internet forum. Later, social media made it easier than ever before to distribute information to one's personal and professional network, helping alternative media that had moved online to increase its distribution. As a result of these developments, the number of alternative media sources available skyrocketed. At the same time, there emerged what some consider a subtype of alternative media, known as fringe media (Beshara, 2018). The line between alternative and fringe media can be difficult to distinguish, and often has more to do with one's political views than with any objective criterion. Fringe media differ primarily in that they are associated with an extreme political viewpoint, and concentrate primarily on attempting to convince others to adopt this viewpoint, while alternative media usually encompass a wider range of issues.

Fringe and alternative media also differ inasmuch as alternative media generally does not compromise truthfulness to present its side of a story, while fringe media are notoriously willing to disregard or misrepresent facts to present a far-fetched, often outrageous, narrative. It can be difficult to classify media as alternative or fringe, without an understanding of the factual basis underlying the issues an outlet is reporting on. Ordinarily, a media outlet might be considered as alternative unless and until two things happen. First, a pattern of inaccuracy would have to emerge in the outlet's reporting. Second, the pattern of inaccuracies would need to favor the viewpoint advocated by the outlet. This would suggest that the outlet is consistently more concerned with ideology than with accuracy (Wong Kok, 2017).

One quality of alternative media is its tendency to focus on topics outside the mainstream, on the theory that these subjects deserve to have the attention of the public much more than those which receive attention from traditional media. Thus, alternative media sometimes derives its status as alternative from the subject matter it explores. Exactly what constitutes an alternative topic is largely dependent on what is being covered by traditional media at any given time. For example, if traditional media are covering a crash of the financial markets with emphasis on how this has impacted businesses through higher interest rates and greater difficulty obtaining loans, alternative media might look at the way the financial crisis has affected the poor and marginalized, who had already been struggling just to survive. Or, it might investigate the possibility that corporate malfeasance played a role in the development of the instability in the market, or explore ways that times of economic difficulty can inspire people to find common ground with one another and seek ways to cooperate with and support one another (Elghamry, 2015).

Alternative media may also be defined by the way they cover a story, rather than what story they choose to cover. A striking example of this could be seen during the years when agricultural corporations began to publicize their research into genetically modified organisms (GMOs). GMOs are living organisms (plants or animals) that are developed through artificial means so that their genetic code is different than it otherwise would be. The differences are introduced in an effort to produce some kind of benefit; a type of grain might be made more resistant to disease, a vegetable could be designed to contain higher amounts of vitamins so that it would be more nutritious for those who consume it, or livestock could be engineered to have a higher chance of producing multiple offspring.

Many companies saw great potential for profit in GMOs because once a GMO strain was proven to be effective it could be patented, making it difficult for others to produce a competitive product. Farmers would understandably wish to purchase the type of grain that could resist diseases, not the type without such protection. As such products started to become available or at least enter the planning stages, traditional media focused a significant amount of attention on the discoveries as revolutionary breakthroughs in agronomy that would change the way people live all over the world and possibly even eliminate hunger. Many in the alternative media sector, however, felt that there were stories about GMOs that were not being told, such as their potential negative effects on individual health and the environment, as well as the possibility of negative consequences for farmers' ability to earn a living (Harlow, 2016). The view of the alternative media was that traditional media outlets, most of which were owned by multinational corporations with vested interests in the success of GMOs, were being given the job of convincing people that GMOs were wonderful breakthroughs and that their benefits would be worth paying any price. Alternative media outlets followed their instincts and revealed that in many cases GMOs had unintended consequences—side effects (some beneficial, some harmful, and some in between) that were unexpected and in many cases under-researched or not studied at all. This eventually led to the growth of a sizable anti-GMO movement in various locations around the world, as large numbers of consumers responded to the availability of GMOs with profound skepticism, often lobbying their grocery stores to either not carry them at all, or to at least label them as genetically modified, so that shoppers would be able to make an informed choice.

Similarly, alternative media uncovered the negative effects GMOs sometimes had on farmers. GMO crops were engineered to not produce fertile seeds, eliminating the ability of the farmer to generate a supply of seed for the next crop and ensuring that farmers would need to buy them from the manufacturers each year. If GMO crops took over in an area, farmers who had not chosen to purchase them would be forced to do so, because their own, fertile seed producing plants would be driven out by the GMO crops within a few years. Had it not been for the viewpoints shared through alternative media, the outcome of the introduction of GMOs into the global marketplace would have been quite different (Macek et al., 2018).

Issues

Alternative media are sometimes viewed as inferior to traditional media in their reporting standards, the thoroughness and impartiality of their research, and in their choice of topics. Often such criticism comes from members of the traditional media, responding to what they see as alternative media's direct or implied criticism of themselves. There are also situations where critiques of alternative media arise from alternative media's willingness to adopt and defend a particular viewpoint, and this speaks to larger, philosophical differences about the proper function of journalism (Ataman & Çoban, 2018).

The established view is that journalists should be objective and should seek only to inform the public about events that are transpiring; it is then the public's role to form an opinion about those events and to act accordingly. Under this theory, it is inappropriate for journalists to display their own opinions about the events they report on, with the exception of the editorial or opinion sections of newspapers and broadcasts. The feeling is that if a journalist begins to introduce his or her views into the story, then it will soon become impossible for the public to tell what parts of the story are factually accurate, and what parts are the journalist's personal assessment. Traditional journalism sees alternative media as suspect because it often does not abide by these expectations—alternative media freely adopt a clear political perspective on many of the issues they cover.

Thus, alternative media might not simply present a report about one nation launching a war against another. Instead, they might frame the report to highlight the motives of the aggressor nation's leaders in starting the war as being related to personal profit, consolidation of political power, or other factors, and then demonstrate the suffering that has resulted from these venial aspirations. Alternative media's reasons for reporting from a discernible moral and political perspective are not simply because doing so is easier, or more viscerally satisfying. Proponents of alternative media tend to believe that there really is no such thing as objective truth because truth can only be perceived by a subjective agent, with biases, preferences, and beliefs acting like filters through which all stimuli must pass (Lee, 2015). Under this view, clinging to the idea of purely objective journalism is delusional at best and at worst an abdication of one's fundamental duty.

Alternative media journalists feel that everyone has a point of view, and this will inevitably creep into one's depiction of events, whether one wants it to and whether one is conscious of it happening. They assert that instead of pretending to be objective, one should locate one's moral center, admit one's biases and use the media platform to persuade others to become aware of events and their impacts.

Bibliography

Anderson, K., Shehata A. & Andersson, D. (2021 November, 10). Alternative news orientation and trust in mainstream media: A longitudinal audience perspective. Digital Journalism, doi:10.1080/21670811.2021.1986412

Ataman, B., & Çoban, B. (2018). Counter-surveillance and alternative new media in Turkey. Information, Communication & Society, 21(7), 1014–1029. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2018.1451908

Beshara, R. K. (2018). Charlie Hebdo: Differences in corporate and alternative media coverage. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 38(1), 132–138. doi:10.1080/13602004.2018.1434940

Elghamry, K. (2015). Periphery discourse: An alternative media eye on the geographical, social and media peripheries in Egypt's spring. Mediterranean Politics, 20(2), 255–272. doi:10.1080/13629395.2015.1033902

Harlow, S. (2016). Reconfiguring and remediating social media as alternative media: Exploring youth activists' digital media ecology in El Salvador. Palabra Clave, 19(4), 997–1026. doi:10.5294/pacla.2016.19.4.3

Ihlebaek, Karoline Andrea, et al. (2022, Nov. 8). Understanding alternative news media and its contribution to diversity. Digital Journalism, 10(8), pp.1267-1282. doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2134165

Lee, F. F. (2018). Internet alternative media, movement experience, and radicalism: The case of post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong. Social Movement Studies, 17(2), 219–233. doi:10.1080/14742837.2017.1404448

Lee, F. F. (2015). Internet alternative media use and oppositional knowledge. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 27(3), 318–340. doi:10.1093/ijpor/edu040

Lin, T. T., & Chiang, Y. (2017). Dual screening: Examining social predictors and impact on online and offline political participation among Taiwanese Internet users. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(2), 240–263. doi:10.1080/08838151.2017.1309419

Macek, J., Macková, A., Pavlopoulos, V., Kalmus, V., Elavsky, C. M., & Šerek, J. (2018). Trust in alternative and professional media: The case of the youth news audiences in three European countries. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15(3), 340–354. doi:10.1080/17405629.2017.1398079

Rauch, J. (2016). Are there still alternatives? Relationships between alternative media and mainstream media in a converged environment. Sociology Compass, 10(9), 756–767. doi:10.1111/soc4.12403

Wong Kok, K. (2017). Whither objective journalism in digital age: Malaysia's mainstream versus alternative media. Media Watch, 8(1), 30–43. doi:10.15655/mw/2017/v8i1/41275