A new, online culture war? The communication world of Breitbart.com. Issue 3 (3rd July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Davis, Mark
• Is Part Of: Communication research and practice. Volume 5:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 241
• Page End: 254
• Publication Date: 2019-07-03
• Subjects: Culture wars -- online media -- 'alt-right' -- troll culture -- Breitbart.com; Communication -- Periodicals; Communication and traffic -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Periodicals; 302.205
• DOI: 10.1080/22041451.2018.1558790
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2204-1451

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Public debate about the US culture wars reached a rancorous peak in the 1990s. At the same time, a no less contested scholarly debate was taking place over the significance of the culture wars, with many critics of the period dismissing the culture wars as an elite affair – a 'war of words' – that mattered little to ordinary Americans. Meanwhile, recent accounts of the culture wars have declared them 'over'. In this paper, I revisit the culture wars through the lens of far right website Breitbart.com, to show how Breitbart deploys a 'culture wars discourse' that reinvigorates the key ideas that animated the US culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. The manifest political influence of sites such as Breitbart, I argue, represents a new development in the process by which cultural politics are increasingly framed by digital networked media.