Books by Jennifer Rauch
Routledge, 2021
Resisting the News brings together unique insights from activists and alternative-media users to ... more Resisting the News brings together unique insights from activists and alternative-media users to offer a distinctive perspective on the problems of journalism today-and how to fix them. Shedding new light on popular theories about "how news works" and about "mass" audiences, this book will be useful to students, scholars, and teachers of political communication, journalism studies, media studies, and critical-cultural studies.
Oxford University Press, 2018
-Discusses the influence of Slow philosophy, Slow Food movements, and social and environmental po... more -Discusses the influence of Slow philosophy, Slow Food movements, and social and environmental policy on principles and practices as they relate to media
- Offers a new ethical framework, rooted in sustainability, for the production and consumption of news media and digital devices
- Provides insight on media non-use and renegotiating media habits through mindfulness
- Introduces emerging vocabulary such as Slow Media, Mindful Media, and Green Media
Papers by Jennifer Rauch
Media, Culture & Society, 2008
This multiple-method study bridges what John D.H. Downing has called a ‘distinctly disturbing gul... more This multiple-method study bridges what John D.H. Downing has called a ‘distinctly disturbing gulf’ between our knowledge of social actors and theories about alternative media by considering the symbolic uses of news in an activist audience and by extending theories of news reading as a ritual act through which social bonds are produced. Because people often read news in private or diffuse situations, reading must be represented to other community members through discourse in order to communicate those information sources – and hence social ideals – they have in common. In interviews, activists downplayed consumption of corporate media, but diaries confirmed that they used a wide range of both alternative and mainstream sources. I propose that this interpretive community achieved its identity in part by rejecting mainstream media, so that performing the role of ‘alternative reader’ served as a marker of individual taste and group belonging.
Communication, Culture and Critique, 2015
This article enriches debates about “alternative media” by exploring what the term means to users... more This article enriches debates about “alternative media” by exploring what the term means to users through an audience survey (n=224). Responses revealed values and practices that respondents agreed were important to alternative media. Users deemed a wide array of media “alternative”: political blogs, public broadcasting, foreign sources, and alternative-press institutions as well as The Daily Show, Facebook, Fox News, and Huffington Post. Despite criticizing corporations and advertising, this audience considered some corporate, commercial outlets “alternative media.” Respondents valued alternative content (neglected issues, diverse voices, mobilizing information) more highly than alternative form (being nonprofit, noncommercial, small-scale). I argue here that the dialectic of alternative media/mainstream media continues to provide a critical and cultural touchstone for users in a converged environment.
Discourse & Communication, 2010
This article examines how US activists articulated the third-person effect, a widespread percepti... more This article examines how US activists articulated the third-person effect, a widespread perception that others are more influenced by media messages than the self is. The discursive, qualitative approach used here contrasts with surveys and experiments prevalent in TPE research: groups watched a news program and responded to non-directional questions in a naturalistic setting. Group members, who reported feeling better informed about current events than the average person, alternately identified themselves as invulnerable and vulnerable to media influence. Discourse analysis showed participants using the pronoun ‘they’ to distinguish themselves from the mass audience; however, they also used ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘you’ to convey first-person and second-person perceptions, suggesting multiple and shifting identifications. This study reveals three conversational strategies — role-playing, inventing dialogue and posing hypothetical statements — through which even people who feel a sense of ‘media superiority’ over others imagine themselves being susceptible to mainstream news. The results, derived from a context allowing people to express mobile and conflicting identities, have implications both for communication scholarship and for social-change agents.
Transformations Journal, 2011
In recent years, a new subculture has begun to form whose members constrain their use of fast, di... more In recent years, a new subculture has begun to form whose members constrain their use of fast, digital media in favor of slow, analog activities. The emergent concept of “Slow Media” marks a cultural innovation, a new way of thinking about and engaging with communication technologies. Slow Media is both a philosophy (an appreciation of print and analog media that challenges mainstream assumptions about technological progress), and a practice (re-directing media production and consumption toward
“slower” mediated or unmediated activities, often by reducing use of digital networks and devices). I create a snapshot here of Slow Media’s origins by looking at its early diffusion through popular and press discourse. My analysis focuses on three periods of
development: precursors who envisioned such a cultural movement; the de facto emergence of Slow Media in 2009; and the idea’s diffusion during the first year. I discuss chronological, geographic and institutional patterns that show when and where
people began talking about Slow Media, how it entered the public agenda, and which discourses have been influential in its wider dissemination. By constructing this preliminary history, I aim to help scholars interested in Slow Media, or other aspects of the media-avoidance and –resistance subcultures, to locate avenues for future research.
Social Movement Studies, 2007
This article examines how journalistic framing of the democratic globalization movement evolved i... more This article examines how journalistic framing of the democratic globalization movement evolved in the five years after its 1999 emergence in Seattle. It takes a longitudinal approach to analyzing social movement coverage by looking for changes in news reporting over time. Protests against the World Trade Organization put this movement on The New York Times’ map, with ‘Seattle’ enduring as a symbolic reference connoting the threat of civic disorder. We found signs of both resilience and change in the newspaper's coverage, which demonstrates complex interactions between reporters, activist groups and real-world events. Delegitimizing language was constant over time, evoking the protest paradigm and riot, confrontation and circus frames as templates. However, this analysis also found evidence of frame dynamism, suggestive of a possible evolving sympathy through which movement members improve access to reporters and get their issues across to the public. Journalists increasingly used movement members as sources, described the movement with fewer marginalizing terms and framed protests more favorably. Our findings about the increased presence of celebrities over other sources and of photographs over text – a phenomenon we call the tabloidization of protest – could have important strategic consequences for social movements. We argue, based on news values relevant to this activism, that mainstream spokespeople and tabloid-like coverage – which may indeed oversimplify and trivialize issues – also have the potential to publicize and popularize social movements.
Popular Communication, 2004
The Internet seems to promise the producers of zines-independent publications characterized by id... more The Internet seems to promise the producers of zines-independent publications characterized by idiosyncratic themes, low circulation, irregular frequency, ephemeral duration, and noncommercial orientation-an irresistible alternative to the medium of print. However, this study finds that many zine editors have resisted migrating to the Web and that those who have published online remain ambivalent toward this new communication technology, in large part due to perceived deficiencies vis--vis their established circulation rituals. I argue, based on in-depth interviews, that interactivity is a mental and social characteristic of these self-publishers, who believe that paper and xerography work better to achieve their goals of hands-on participation in a subcultural community.
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2003
This study compares news coverage produced by the mainstream Associated Press (AP) and the altern... more This study compares news coverage produced by the mainstream Associated Press (AP) and the alternative Inter Press Service (IPS), an organization that highlights development issues and seeks balanced geographic representation in journalism. A cultural analysis of the two agencies’content provides a concrete example of how AP and IPS articles represent the South differently at the level where audiences actually experience news: the text. The qualitative analysis finds that in reporting on the Group of 77 Summit that convened in Cuba in 2000, IPS discourse emphasizes Southern nations’ cooperation, achievement, and goals, while the AP frames the event in terms of their disunity, neglect, and controversy. It concludes that the dominant agency filters news through U.S. hegemonic interests and assumptions, underscoring the need for more diverse sources of information in order for the public to adequately assess world events.
Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 2003
This survey of more than 400 journalism students sought to inform researchers and educators regar... more This survey of more than 400 journalism students sought to inform researchers and educators regarding 1) the degree to which college students support a range of civic journalism approaches, 2) whether greater support for the “new” values of civic journalism correlates with less support for traditional ones, such as objectivity, and 3) what characteristics among students are linked to greater support for civic journalism values and practices. We found that news-writing students accepted many, if not most, of the values and practices related to civic journalism, including reporting on alternative solutions, holding town-hall meetings, registering voters, and organizing community discussions. Students supported newspapers’ active engagement in communities at a high level that was previously unknown, which has important implications for teaching journalism.
Explorations in Media Ecology, 2014
The increasing mediatization of everyday life has raised concerns about the consequences of digit... more The increasing mediatization of everyday life has raised concerns about the consequences of digital technology for individual self-determination. This article examines innovative practices of unplugging that people have constructed to challenge media logic and contest dominant cultural values—by creating create times and spaces of demediatization. The media ecology perspective, especially the work of James Carey, helps to shed light upon new rituals such as digital sabbaths, fasts, diets and detox that advocate reducing or avoiding media use. An analysis of the spiritual and corporeal metaphors in popular discourse about unplugging reveals many symbolic and instrumental meanings that motivate resistant media users, a group oft-neglected by researchers. This essay considers the collective obstacles to such individual practices and demonstrates that through constructive rituals, unpluggers not only critique mainstream culture but also enact an alternative vision of life.
Book Chapters by Jennifer Rauch
Alternative Media Meets Mainstream Politics: Activist Nation Rising (eds. Atkinson and Kenix), 2019
This chapter helps to fill gaps in our knowledge of the relationships among right-wing activists,... more This chapter helps to fill gaps in our knowledge of the relationships among right-wing activists, conservative media, and alternative journalism. The vast majority of research on alternative and activist media, especially in the U.S., has to date assumed a progressive orientation and focused on liberal sources, messages and audiences. By contrast, this paper revisits the literature to illuminate how the field has variously examined and neglected the ideas, practices and publics of right-wing media users. It reports a new analysis of survey data revealing both similarities and divergences between conservative and progressive audiences in regards to their attitudes toward alternative and mainstream media—in particular, toward the individual and structural biases of professional journalism. These findings will help scholars, journalists and other actors to better understand, theorize, and study the role of alternative media users in mainstream political communication. It also suggests several points of departure for future work on alternative journalism, partisan rhetorical strategies, media criticism, and public engagement.
Audience & Interpretation (International Encyclopedia of Media Studies), 2013
In an era of “social media” technologies, instrumental goals such as networking, organizing, and ... more In an era of “social media” technologies, instrumental goals such as networking, organizing, and information-sharing hold great sway over the study of activist culture. Researchers often conceptualize activists’ media use as participation in message production and dissemination, while overlooking practices related to reception and interpretation – that is, activists as audiences. In this chapter I propose that the moments in which activists engage with media as listeners, readers, and viewers are just as interesting to scholarship as those in which people create and/or share media relevant to activism. By shifting some emphasis from the transmission mode of activists’ media use to the ritual or symbolic dimension, we can better understand how media habits help sustain activist identities and a sense of belonging, which serves as a precursor to participation. I also assert the importance of low-tech media, face-to-face communication, and offline participation among such audiences, whose members aim to connect mediated activities with real-world ones, and identify some social limitations in technological activism. The chapter concludes by suggesting avenues for future study that explore why activists choose to receive certain messages and how ritual contributes to people getting and staying involved with activist communities.
The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media, 2015
This essay draws upon concepts such as aura, residual media, and the emergent Slow Media" to help... more This essay draws upon concepts such as aura, residual media, and the emergent Slow Media" to help explain the continued appeal of print and analog forms in a digital culture. My analysis focuses on vinyl records and printed zines, two examples of low-tech media persisting in the early 21st century. These case studies reveal anti-capitalist, anti-corporate strains in the Slow Media movement, which isn’t necessarily anti-digital or anti-progress. I argue that Slow Media advocates are putting put forth a critique of consumer culture that espouses collective intervention in the cultural domination and commodification that they perceive. In sum: Slow Media are alternative media whose proponents frame the use of print and analog forms as an act of cultural resistance with both progressive and conservative aspects.
International Encyclopedia of Communication , 2008
A zine is an independent publication produced by an individual or collective on a low budget and ... more A zine is an independent publication produced by an individual or collective on a low budget and distributed on a small scale primarily for personal, artistic, or social aims rather than for profit. Because zine communities arise outside of mainstream media systems, they represent ways in which people understand and engage with media that diverge from consumer capitalism. While there is some question as to whether modern self-publishing can foster social change, scholars (as well as zine producers themselves) have observed that many common practices of zine culture are guided by democratic ideals of expression, inclusion, and participation.
Conference Presentations by Jennifer Rauch
What is Technology? Conference, Portland, Oregon, 2019
Critics of new technology are routinely and inaccurately called “Luddites,” referring to fact... more Critics of new technology are routinely and inaccurately called “Luddites,” referring to factory workers in England who destroyed machines in protest against the social-political consequences of early industrial capitalism. In this paper, I re-evaluate the values and practices of Luddites, who for two centuries have been misrepresented as opposed to technology. How did these highly skilled machine operators get saddled with such a reputation? Why does their struggle still strike a powerful chord today? How does 19th-century Luddism help us understand technological change in the 21st-century?
This paper first examines the many stages that public perceptions of historical Luddites have gone through since 1811: as local heroes, public menaces, enemies of the state, noble revolutionaries, and early archetypes of environmental and anti-globalization activists. It then explores how Luddism resonates with 1990s tech criticism by advocates of the anti-television, Neo-Luddite, and Technorealism movements. It concludes by introducing a rhetorical stance called “Post-Luddism” that enriches conversations about technology by incorporating modern concerns about the environment, globalization, and sustainability.
I explain how Post-Luddism accommodates complex, diverse, and nuanced attitudes that challenge binary oppositions such as technophile vs. technophobe, techno-utopian vs. techno-dystopian, techno-optimist vs. techno-pessimist. This paper aims to defang the rhetorical bogeyman haunting conversations about technological change by proposing constructive new language that conveys alternative ways of understanding interactions between technology and society.
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Books by Jennifer Rauch
- Offers a new ethical framework, rooted in sustainability, for the production and consumption of news media and digital devices
- Provides insight on media non-use and renegotiating media habits through mindfulness
- Introduces emerging vocabulary such as Slow Media, Mindful Media, and Green Media
Papers by Jennifer Rauch
“slower” mediated or unmediated activities, often by reducing use of digital networks and devices). I create a snapshot here of Slow Media’s origins by looking at its early diffusion through popular and press discourse. My analysis focuses on three periods of
development: precursors who envisioned such a cultural movement; the de facto emergence of Slow Media in 2009; and the idea’s diffusion during the first year. I discuss chronological, geographic and institutional patterns that show when and where
people began talking about Slow Media, how it entered the public agenda, and which discourses have been influential in its wider dissemination. By constructing this preliminary history, I aim to help scholars interested in Slow Media, or other aspects of the media-avoidance and –resistance subcultures, to locate avenues for future research.
Book Chapters by Jennifer Rauch
Conference Presentations by Jennifer Rauch
This paper first examines the many stages that public perceptions of historical Luddites have gone through since 1811: as local heroes, public menaces, enemies of the state, noble revolutionaries, and early archetypes of environmental and anti-globalization activists. It then explores how Luddism resonates with 1990s tech criticism by advocates of the anti-television, Neo-Luddite, and Technorealism movements. It concludes by introducing a rhetorical stance called “Post-Luddism” that enriches conversations about technology by incorporating modern concerns about the environment, globalization, and sustainability.
I explain how Post-Luddism accommodates complex, diverse, and nuanced attitudes that challenge binary oppositions such as technophile vs. technophobe, techno-utopian vs. techno-dystopian, techno-optimist vs. techno-pessimist. This paper aims to defang the rhetorical bogeyman haunting conversations about technological change by proposing constructive new language that conveys alternative ways of understanding interactions between technology and society.
- Offers a new ethical framework, rooted in sustainability, for the production and consumption of news media and digital devices
- Provides insight on media non-use and renegotiating media habits through mindfulness
- Introduces emerging vocabulary such as Slow Media, Mindful Media, and Green Media
“slower” mediated or unmediated activities, often by reducing use of digital networks and devices). I create a snapshot here of Slow Media’s origins by looking at its early diffusion through popular and press discourse. My analysis focuses on three periods of
development: precursors who envisioned such a cultural movement; the de facto emergence of Slow Media in 2009; and the idea’s diffusion during the first year. I discuss chronological, geographic and institutional patterns that show when and where
people began talking about Slow Media, how it entered the public agenda, and which discourses have been influential in its wider dissemination. By constructing this preliminary history, I aim to help scholars interested in Slow Media, or other aspects of the media-avoidance and –resistance subcultures, to locate avenues for future research.
This paper first examines the many stages that public perceptions of historical Luddites have gone through since 1811: as local heroes, public menaces, enemies of the state, noble revolutionaries, and early archetypes of environmental and anti-globalization activists. It then explores how Luddism resonates with 1990s tech criticism by advocates of the anti-television, Neo-Luddite, and Technorealism movements. It concludes by introducing a rhetorical stance called “Post-Luddism” that enriches conversations about technology by incorporating modern concerns about the environment, globalization, and sustainability.
I explain how Post-Luddism accommodates complex, diverse, and nuanced attitudes that challenge binary oppositions such as technophile vs. technophobe, techno-utopian vs. techno-dystopian, techno-optimist vs. techno-pessimist. This paper aims to defang the rhetorical bogeyman haunting conversations about technological change by proposing constructive new language that conveys alternative ways of understanding interactions between technology and society.