ABSTRACT
A distinct body of academic work has taken shape under the rubric of ‘alternative media’ and its cognate terms, consolidated and rapidly expanding from roughly 2000–2001. Writing a decade prior to this surge in scholarly production, Jassem (1990: 12) suggested that often “it is not entirely clear” what we mean by the term. Numerous subsequent articles have departed from a similar premise – and despite the volume and variety of work that has come on the heels of this assertion, which has treated a wide variety of objects (texts, practices, forms of organisation) and generated diverse theoretical accounts, the problem has yet to be dispensed with. Andersson (2012: 755), for example, suggests that there still exists an “uncertainty as to whether ‘alternative media’ … is an analytical construction,” or remains in the imprecise realm of ‘common-sense’ concepts derived from everyday language, thin on coherence and specificity. While some may prefer to move among the abundance of cognate terms suggested to delimit, nuance, and subdivide the conceptual territory (e.g., radical, independent, participatory, community, grassroots, citizens’, autonomous, tactical, critical, or social movement media), a pluralism that could be seen to evade the initial definitional quandary, others find the ubiquitous ‘alternative’ moniker a useful umbrella under which to consolidate broader discussion. On the whole, it seems that questions of differential emphasis and conceptualisation among scholars are (still) in need of some sorting out.
