Media and January 6th

by Khadijah Costley White (Editor), Daniel Kreiss (Editor), Shannon C. McGregor (Editor), Rebekah Tromble (Editor)

Overview

The images cast across screens across the country on January 6, 2021, laid bare the fragility of American democracy as the steps and halls of the US Capitol were inundated by a violent band of insurrectionists. Fed by blatant lies, political anger, and racial animus, they sought to halt a procedure enshrined in the US Constitution and to overturn a freely and fairly run election. Meanwhile, efforts to obstruct, avoid, and misrepresent the subsequent investigation of the January 6th attack have continued apace.

With a relative dearth of work that centers historical and contemporary racial, ethnic, and power dynamics in the context of media, our interdisciplinary field was caught flat-footed, unprepared to respond to those who actively seek to undermine American democracy. This edited volume is a first step toward remedying that situation. Media and January 6th brings together a diverse group of leading scholars to help us more clearly understand the relationship between media and the attempted coup. The volume examines why and how January 6th came to be and the centrality of media to the event. It is organized around three key questions: How should we understand January 6, 2021? What should research look like after January 6, 2021? And how can we prevent another event like this?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197758526
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/11/2024
Series:	Journalism and Political Communication Unbound
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	9.25(w) x 6.12(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Khadijah Costley White is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. She researches politics, social change, and identity in media. Her first book, The Branding of Right-Wing Activism: The News Media and the Tea Party (Oxford, 2018) examines the rise of the Tea Party in online, print, broadcast, and cable news. She has also worked as a journalist for PBS and written for outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic and more.

Daniel Kreiss is the Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a principal researcher of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. Kreiss co-edits the Oxford University Press book series Journalism and Political Communication Unbound and is an associate editor of Political Communication.

Shannon C. McGregor is an Associate Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism & Media and a Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life - both at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research addresses the role of media and social media in political processes, with a focus on the interplay of three groups essential to a functioning democracy: politicians, journalists, and the public. In addition to academic outlets, McGregor writes often for the public press, and her work appears in outlets such as The Washington Post, Wired, and The Guardian.

Rebekah Tromble is Director of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics and Associate Professor in the School of Media & Public Affairs at George Washington University. Her research focuses on political communication, digital research methodology, and research ethics, with particular interests in political discourse on social media and the impacts of exposure to toxic and abusive content. Dr. Tromble regularly serves as advisor to policymakers and civil society on digital platform accountability and responsible data access and use. She is a member of the European Digital Media Observatory’s Advisory Board and co-founder of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Understanding Media's Role in January 6th, 2021, Khadijah Costley White, Daniel Kreiss, Shannon C. McGregor, Rebekah Tromble,

SECTION ONE
How should we understand January 6, 2021?
2. It Was an Attempted Coup, The Cline Center's Coup d'État Project Categorizes the January 6, 2021 Assault on the US Capitol, Scott L. Althaus, Joseph Bajjalieh, Jay Jennings, Michael Martin, Buddy Peyton, and Dan Shalmon
3. January 6th and the Boundaries of Protest, Danielle K. Brown
4. Remembering January 6th: An Insurrection, the Media, and the Shadow of the Tea Party, Khadijah Costley White
5. “Stop the Steal” and the Racial Legacy of Election Disinformation, Francesca Tripodi
6. “Fake and Fraudulent” vs. “An American Right”: Competing Imaginaries of the Vote in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaign, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Brian McKernan, Christy Khoury, and Pyeonghwa Kim
7. The Changing American Racial Landscape and January 6th, Andrew Thompson
8. Identity Distillation: The Engine Driving America's Asymmetrically Sorted Mediated Political Crisis, Dannagal G. Young
9. January 6th as Logical Extension of Conservative Populism, Paul Elliott Johnson
10. Anti-democratic Publics: The January 6th Mob and Digital Organizing, Silvio Waisbord
11. The Ordinary Insurrection: January 6 and the Mainstreaming of Political Violence, Alice E. Marwick

12. The Anti-Democratic Feedback Loop: Right-Wing Media Responses to January 6, Becca Lewis

SECTION TWO:
What should research look like after January 6, 2021? How can we prevent another January 6, 2021?

13. Online Data and the Insurrection, Megan A. Brown
14. What Can “We” Do?, Reflections on Politics After January 6, Cynthia Burack
15. Political Communication Research at a Time of Democratic Crises, Daniel Kreiss
16. It's Not Just the Fruit, It's the Factory Farm: Assessing the Past, Present, and Future of January 6th, Whitney Phillips and Regina Lawrence
17. Not Just Higher Truths: Critical Inquiry into Conservative Media After January 6th, Anthony Nadler
18. Rethinking Right-wing Media in the Wake of an Attempted Coup, Yunkang Yang
19. The Local Roots of January 6th: A Mixed-Methods, Multi-Level Approach to Political Communication, Sadie Dempsey and Jianing Li
20. Afflicting the Comfortable, Dave Karpf
21. Taking it to the States, Lewis Friedland
22. Reparation Through Reporting, Meredith D. Clark
23. Epilogue, Daniel Kreiss, Shannon C. McGregor, Rebekah Tromble, and Khadijah Costley White.

Editorial Reviews

"This insightful book offers a compelling exploration of the Jan. 6 insurrection, urging political communication scholars to delve fully into the event's complexities. With meticulous analysis and thought-provoking perspectives, this text provides a crucial framework for understanding the role of the news media as a tool for both information and reparation during unprecedented times of upheaval." — Dr. Allissa Richardson, Associate Professor of Journalism, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, and Founding Director, USC Charlotta Bass Journalism & Justice Lab

"The events that unfolded in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, shocked many people in the United States as well as in other countries. In this volume, an all-star cast of scholars offer an array of perspectives on the various meanings of these events, and chart possible research trajectories for future studies on the intersection of media and politics. With the foundations of democracy currently being undermined across the globe, The Media and January 6th is poised to become an indispensable resource to make sense of turbulent times." — Dr. Pablo J. Boczkowski, Author of Abundance: On the Experience of Living in a World of Information Plenty and Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, and Director, Center for Latinx Digital Media at Northwestern

From the Publisher