Amplifying Extremism: Small Town Politicians, Media Storms, and American Journalism (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781009668781)

Within a week, a no-name Republican state representative from a town of 384 people in Illinois catapulted from obscurity to a prime-time appearance on Fox News' Ingraham Angle. This newly empowered politician, Darren Bailey, would go on to steer the pro-business Republican party in Illinois toward extremism. Democratic backsliding emerges across all levels of politics, but the threats posed by small-town politicians have been overshadowed by national-level politicians. This microstudy of a single politician's debut in the public eye showcases a novel approach to media corpus construction that combines proprietary and open databases, aggregated search tools, and targeted searching, and includes local, regional, and national news across digital-first, radio, news publishers, broadcast and cable television, and social media. The Element provides unique insights into how American journalism creates space for small-town extremists to gain power, especially given declines in local news.

Author: Nik Usher, Jessica C. Hagman
ISBN-10: 1009668781
ISBN-13: 9781009668781
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/12/2025
Pages: 88
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.64lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.25d