Alternative Media & Bourdieu's Field: Internal Resistance or External Competition?

This paper attempts to situate alternative media in relation to Bourdieu's journalistic (or media) field. More specifically, it explores the various conceptions of media power and the ways in which the media field influences, and is influenced by, other fields, as well as its internal dynamics in the struggle for the control of symbolic power. Using Fuchs' (2010) critical media model as a starting point, the current analysis argues in favor of a conceptualization of alternative media as conflictual activist media; media focused on contesting centralized power from within – through its alternative form and focus – and from without by mobilizing the public in pursuit of an alternative organization of society. Ultimately identifying a continuous process of de-centering and re-centering within the media field, this paper identifies the role of conflictual activist media as one of “conflictual unity,” following Muhlmann (2010).