Document Type

Other

Publication Date

Summer 6-12-2025

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009668798

Version

Pre-print: the initial article submitted to the journal for consideration (prior to peer review)

Disciplines

American Politics | Communication

Abstract

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.

Notes

Note: This is a pre-print/Draft version of the manuscript. We aren't uploading the online appendix. 

Download

Share

COinS