Article,

Theory Through History: Exploring Scholarly Conceptions of U.S. Alternative Media

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The Communication Review, 4 (3): 304--326 (2001)
DOI: 10.1080/10714420109359472

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to a cultural history of alternative media in the United States. It analyzes the relationships between major scholarship on alternative media and various historical contexts in order to discover various conceptions' limitations and possibilities. The value of such a study is not only how it recovers the variety of ways in which alternative media have been thought. By doing so, it also reminds readers of the necessary relation between theoretical conceptions and historical conditions remarked on by scholars. Such a study also reminds of the contingency of conceptions today, which typically emphasize separately or in combination (a) a kind of content, (b) a means of funding, or (c) the use of new technologies. The article begins by tracing the emergence and development of a dominant interpretive theory based in vanguardism, essentialism, and technological determinism, and concludes by discussing recent efforts that are grounded in materialist theories of culture and society. Such a change signals an ongoing project of generating understandings of alternative media that suggest the reciprocal relationships between modes of production, media forms, and oppositional, participatory practice.

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