Alternative Media as
Critical Media
Christian Fuchs
University of Salzburg, Austria
Abstract
This article deals with the category of alternative media from a theoretical perspective. It
aims to develop a definition and to distinguish different dimensions of alternative media.
The article is a contribution to theoretical foundations of alternative media studies. The
notion of alternative media as critical media is introduced. Critical media product content
shows the suppressed possibilities of existence, antagonisms of reality, and potentials for
change. It questions domination, expresses the standpoints of the oppressed and
dominated groups and individuals and argues for the advancement of a co-operative society.
Critical media product form aims at advancing imagination; it is dialectical because it involves
dynamics, non-identity, rupture, and the unexpected. The category of critical media is connected
to Negt and Kluge’s notion of the counter-public sphere. Critical media can be seen
as the communicative dimension of the counter-public sphere.
Keywords
alternative media, critical theory, media theory, philosophy of communication, social
theory
The aim of this article is to develop a definition and to distinguish different dimensions
of alternative media. Alternative media is both an under-researched topic and an underrepresented
topic in the social sciences. Most introductory books do not feature sections
on alternative media nor do they mention alternative media at all (e.g. Beck et al., 2004;
Burkart, 2002; Gill and Adams, 1998; Hartley, 2002; Maletzke, 1998; Schirato and Yell,
2000). For example, Dennis McQuail (2005) discusses alternative media on less than two
pages. There are 44 papers that contain the term ‘alternative media’ in the title in Social
Corresponding author:
Christian Fuchs
Email: christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at
Web-Address: http://fuchs.uti.at
173
European J of Social Theory 13(2): 173-192 (2010)
Sciences Citation Index (accessed 13 March 2010). One gets an impression of how
under-researched this field is, if one compares it to a title search for ‘public relations’,
which yields 1656 results.
Alternative media seems to be a largely neglected field of research. This article is a
contribution to the elaboration of the theoretical foundations of alternative media. It asks
the question: How should alternative media be defined? In order to answer this, the study
explores the notion of alternative media as critical media.
The aim is to go beyond vague definitions, such as the following one: ‘Essentially
counter-hegemonic, that is challenging established, hierarchical, systems of politics, economics,andCULTURE,
alternative media take manyforms’ (WatsonandHill,2003:172).
What is needed, besides more empirical studies, are also more theories of alternative
media. Not many connections between alternative media theory and social theory have
thus far been established. Alternative media studies are also strongly connected to
Anarchist perspectives (cf. e.g. Atton, 2002), which might be due to the shared focus
on self-organizing practices. The contention that I make here is that Anarchist notions
of alternative media are insufficient because they tend to idealize small-scale production
and tend to neglect orientation towards the political public. My alternative draft is that a
realistic Marxist theory of alternative media is needed. The contention is that alternative
media should not only be understood as alternative media practices, but also as critical
media that question dominative society.
As part of the introduction, I will now first outline the social theory framework that
will be employed to discuss the theoretical foundations of alternative media.
A more consistent typology of approaches can be introduced by referring to a distinction
that is considered by Anthony Giddens as one of the central issues of social theory: the
‘division between objectivism and subjectivism’ (Giddens, 1984: xx). Subjective
approaches are oriented on human agents and their practices as primary object of analysis,
objective approaches on social structures. Structures in this respect are institutionalized
relationships that are stabilized across time and space (Giddens, 1984: xxxi). Applying
this distinction to the realm of the media makes a distinction between subjective and
objective media theories. The former primarily deal with those people and groups that produce
and consume the media (journalists, audience). They are oriented on media actors.
The latter are primarily concerned with the more durable results of media: media products,
media institutions, the rules, values, norms that shape the media, the economic and ideological
features of the media, etc. These approaches are focused on media structures.
Giddens (1984) tried to overcome the separation of subject and object in his theory of
structuration by formulating the theorem of the duality of structure that connects subjects
and objects of society dialectically by arguing that social structures are medium and
outcome of social actions, they at the same time enable and constrain practices (Fuchs,
2003a, 2003b). Applying this theorem to the media means that media structures and media
practices are dialectically connected and produce each other so that the media system is a
dynamic system that is reproduced through a dialectic of media subjects (human actors
who engage in media production and reception) and media objects (media structures).
In the mass media system, journalists are actors who produce content, with the help of
specific rules, procedures, structures, and technologies. This system aimed at informing a
broader public. Informing the public in this context means that the journalists/producers
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aim at a transformation of consciousness of the public. The content provided can have
news value, entertainment value, or artistic-aesthetic value. In order to distribute the
content so that it reaches the public and potential recipients, the content information is
stored and transmitted through storage and transmission technologies (such as, for example,
satellite transmission, CDs, DVDs, videos, records, computer hard disks, fibre optic
transmission cables, etc.) and organizational structures (e.g. sales and marketing departments,
marketing strategies, etc.). Content distribution is the foundation of reception.
Production is only possible based on reception and distribution. If reception stops,
there is no further need for production. Produced goods are only meaningful if they are
consumed. Production implies a need for distribution and consumption. Reception is
itself a production process, the production of meaning. In reception, users/audiences/
recipients interpret media content based on their lived experiences and societal contexts.
The meaning of objects always depends on the societal and historical context. Meanings
are never unhistorical or transcendental, but always social and historical. They are
determined by the social context of the production and use of sign systems. They change
by societal differentiation. Different meanings can be ascribed to the same object. Stuart
Hall (1999) has pointed out that a certain degree of determinism in the form of hegemonic
meaning as well as a certain degree of indeterminism in the form of negotiated
meaning and oppositional meaning is present in the cultural reception process.
Hall’s main achievement is that he has shown that there is no necessary correspondence
between encoding and decoding. Different interpretations can exist in parallel and
even in opposition and antagonism to each other. I have added to these three forms of
reception a fourth and a fifth one: critical reception and manipulative reception, that can
be partly overlapping with the other types in certain situations. The notion of critical
reception will be further elaborated below.
Media are not just social systems, they are social systems that reach a wide public and
are therefore part of communication processes in public spheres. Therefore, the notion of
the public sphere is important for a social theory of the media in general and as a result
also for a social theory of alternative media.
For Habermas ([1974] 2001), the public sphere as ideal-type is a realm that is
accessible to all citizens so that they can control and limit state power through discussion,
criticism, control, and elections (formation of public opinion). In the struggle for
enlightenment and against the monarchy, the bourgeois public sphere, based on constitutional
rights and the media, would emerge. Throughout its development, however, it
would be deformed and be controlled by special interests that constitute ‘a climate of
nonpublic opinion’ (Habermas, [1974] 2001: 77) that is manipulated by commercial
media and advertising. Habermas imagines a true public sphere, in which all competing
groups and parties make information accessible to the public, engage in public discussion,
and make political compromises that are ‘legitimized through this process of public
communication’ (Habermas, [1974] 2001: 78, cf. also 1989: 210).
For Habermas, a true public sphere is compatible with capitalist society. He imagines
the transformation of the political system, but not of the relations of production and ownership.
But as capitalism is based on the unequal control of resources by the social
classes, one might argue that resource inequality will result in unfair material advantages
in public opinion formation (such as through the ownership structure of the mass media)
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for certain groups and that Habermas’s notion of the public sphere is therefore idealistic.
The abolishment of classes is for Habermas not a precondition for the creation of an
inclusive public sphere. Alternative media as intellectual means of struggle do not exist
in his social-democratic account. In relation to the media, Habermas distinguishes
between a ‘manipulated public sphere’/manipulated publicity (Habermas, 1989: 217,
236) and ‘a critical publicity’ (p. 235). For Habermas, critical publicity is a quality of
a true public sphere (p. 248) that is based on communicative action. It is not seen as publicity
that struggles in capitalism against capitalism, but as an ideal vision. Habermas
does not ignore the ‘colonization of the public sphere by market imperatives’ (Habermas,
2006: 422), but nonetheless he does not see the abolishment of these imperatives as necessary
(Habermas, 2006: 419; 1992: 436, 444, 469f).
Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge’s (1972) notion of a proletarian (counter-)public
sphere can be read as both a socialist critique and a radicalization of Habermas’s approach
(cf. Calhoun, 1992: 5; Jameson, 1988). For them, the critical function of a proletarian public
sphere is to contribute intellectual means to class struggles. They characterize the proletarian
counter-public sphere as being radically different from and opposed to the
bourgeois public sphere (Negt and Kluge, 1972: 7, 106–8), as an expression of the degree
of emancipation of the working class (p. 66), a sphere of autonomous communication of
the proletariat (pp. 77, 314), a society within society (pp. 341–55), an expression of the
self-organization and unfolding of the interests of workers (pp. 111, 163), and a selfdefence
organization of the working class (p. 113). This sphere would generalize and
unify the collective experiences of the proletariat (pp. 24, 310), especially its experiences
in production and its context of living (pp. 223f, 346f). It would produce counter-products,
not just ideas: ‘Idea against idea, product against product, production sector against production
sector’ (p. 143). Contrary to Habermas, bourgeois and proletarian public sphere
can never coexist for Negt and Kluge. The first would destroy the second (1972: 70f).
Based on these theoretical foundations, this article first applies the notion of subject
and object to alternative media theories, then introduces the notion of alternative media
as critical media, relates this notion to the category of the counter public sphere, and
finally draws some conclusions.
Existing Issues and Theories of Alternative Media
In this section, ways of defining alternative media as well as central issues of alternative
media theory will be introduced. Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier (2008) constructed a
typology of theories of alternative media. They distinguish between four approaches that
define alternative media in different ways. First, the community media approach argues
that participation of members of a community in content production and media organization
is central for alternative media. Others see the provision of content by alternative
media as alternative to mainstream media (large-scale, state-owned or commercial, hierarchical,
dominant discourses vs. small-scale, independent, non-hierarchical, nondominant
discourses). Third, one can identify approaches that use the notion of
counter-hegemonic media that are part of civil society and form a third voice between
state media and commercial media. And, finally, one can identify approaches that speak
of rhizomatic media that are relational because they link different protest groups and
176 European Journal of Social Theory 13(2)
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movements, connect the local and the global, and establish different types of
relationships with the market and/or the state.
This typology is interesting, but seems to be arbitrary. An underlying that is grounded
in and justified by social theory and used to explain the differences and commonalities of
the approaches, is missing. The four approaches are introduced not based on a theoretical
distinction, but arbitrarily. Another arbitrary distinction of approaches is made by Rauch
(2007), who distinguishes between defining alternative media as alternative content,
alternative channels, alternative sources that are featured, or alternative values.
Typologies should always be complete, i.e. able to map all existing approaches, and
be based on an explicit underlying theoretical criterion. One such criterion is Giddens’s
distinction between subjective, objective, and dialectical social theories. It allows the
categorization of all approaches of a specific theoretical field.
The subject–object distinction can be framed as the distinction between process- and
content-oriented approaches in alternative media-theory. The former stress selforganized
production processes as central characteristic of alternative media (e.g. Atton,
2002, 2004, Beywl and Brombach, 1982; 2002; Curran, 2002: Couldry and Curran,
2003: 7; Dagron, 2004; Hu¨ttner, 2006; Rodriguez, 2003: 190; 241; Weichler, 1987: 151).
Such a focus on process excludes many oppositional media that act in more professional
ways. Journals such as New Internationalist (with a circulation of over 70,000, the
largest left-wing publication in the UK), Le Monde Diplomatique (probably the most
important alternative publication in terms of global reach and circulation), Z Magazine,
Rethinking Marxism, Historical Materialism, Monthly Review, or New Left Review have
critical content, but they have professional editorial teams. Therefore, not all citizens can
easily become writers. These are journals where professionals report and criticize domination.
Because such oppositional media have political importance for the Left, it would
be a mistake to exclude them from the category of alternative media just because they
do not have self-organized production structures. It is better to distinguish between
different alternative media strategies that might be appropriate to different progressive
contexts.
Process approaches are mostly oriented on self-organized small-scale community
media that enable citizen participation. The danger that lies in this orientation is that such
media will remain insignificant and be unable to have a transformative political potential
because they are unable to reach a mass public and therefore are unable to be embedded
in a large counter-public sphere. Such media tend to produce fragmented unconnected
publics that are only accessed by isolated subgroups and undermine the possibility for
a large sphere of political communication that is accessed by all exploited, oppressed,
and excluded groups and individuals. Comedia (1984) characterizes small-scale alternative
media as an ‘‘‘alternative’’ ghetto’ that lacks resources and therefore political
relevance. Knoche speaks of the threat of alternative media remaining insignificant
non-profit-dogs (Knoche, 2003: 10). I am not saying that small-scale community media
should not be considered forms of alternative media, but that it is important to stress that
they are not suited to supporting and advancing large-scale political change processes.
The ideal of practising grassroots democracy in a world that is dominated by economic
and political elites who control economic and political resources can become problematic
for alternative media. If they lack resources (as they frequently do), then self-exploitation
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and precarious labour will be the outcome. Resource scarcity can result in time- and
energy-consuming internal conflicts and divisions that further undermine the political
potentials of alternative media. A pluralistic media landscape, in which each consumer
can become a media producer with the help of alternative media, is not automatically a
media democracy. If only a few are heard, then a situation of repressive tolerance
(Marcuse, 1969) emerges that legitimizes the continuing existence of dominant capitalist
media corporations that centralize profits, wealth, power, recipients, and influence.
Other alternative media approaches are more focused on media products (e.g. Downing,
2001; O’Sullivan, 1994). These are objective alternative media theories. They are oriented
on media structures. For John Downing, the central characteristic of alternative media is
their alternative political vision: ‘By radical media, I refer to media, generally smallscale
and in many different forms, that express an alternative vision to hegemonic policies,
priorities, and perspectives’ (Downing, 2001: v).
In the next section, I will formulate my own concept of alternative media as critical
media.
Alternative Media as Critical Media
Alternative media are mass media that challenge the dominant capitalist forms of media
production, media structures, content, distribution, and reception. Table 1 gives a comparative
overview of the potential characteristics of alternative media. Not all of these
criteria are necessary qualities of alternative media. The central aspects are journalists
and their practices, recipients and their practices (actor-oriented), media product structures,
media organizational structures, and media distribution structures (structure-
oriented).
In elite journalism, one finds journalists as a professional wage-labour class that is
confronted with corporate and political pressures, journalistic production conditioned
by power processes, and the accumulation of journalistic status capital. The model of
citizen journalism, in which one finds the independence of writers from corporate and
political influences and pressures, challenges this production model. Anybody can be
an author without specific training or expertise. Ordinary citizens can become journalists,
so journalism is citizen-controlled. Individuals or groups, that are affected by certain
problems, become journalists or at least the positive subject of journalism (concerned
citizens). Such journalistic practice is frequently part of protest movement practices.
Consumers become producers (prosumers, produsers), the audience becomes active.
Table 1. Potential dimensions of traditional and critical media
Dimension Capitalist mass media Alternative media
Journalistic Production Elite journalism Citizens’ journalism
Media Product Structures Ideological form and content Critical Form and content
Organizational media Structures Hierarchical media
organizations
Grassroots media organizations
Distribution structures Marketing and public relations Alternative distribution
Reception practices Manipulative reception Critical reception
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Content and form of traditional media are ideological. Content is strictly defined by
what is considered as popular and sellable. The drive for profit can result in a lack of
quality, complexity, and sophistication (as e.g. yellow journalism that simplifies reality
and is focused on singular examples, emotionalism, and sensationalism). Content takes
on an ideological form either by reporting that is based on manipulation or by stories that
are reported as important, but are not really important for society at large. In any case,
such content aims to distract the recipients from confrontation with actual societal problems
and their causes.
Critical media, in contrast, are characterized by critical form and content. There is
oppositional content that provides alternatives to dominant repressive heteronomous perspectives
that reflect the rule of capital, patriarchy, racism, sexism, nationalism, etc.
Such content expresses oppositional standpoints that question all forms of heteronomy
and domination. So there is counter-information and counter-hegemony that includes the
voices of the excluded, the oppressed, the dominated, the enslaved, the estranged, the
exploited, and the dominated. One aim is to give voices to the voiceless, media power
to the powerless as well as to transcend the filtering and censorship of information by
corporate information monopolies, state monopolies, or cultural monopolies in public
information and communication. There are forms of presentation that are not onedimensional,
but are demanding and challenging the recipients in order to advance their
imagination and complex thinking (e.g. Brecht’s concept of dialectical form in epic
theatre, radical discontinuities that shock people).
Concerning organizational structures, on the one hand, there are hierarchical capitalist
media corporations that aim primarily to make a profit. They are financed by selling
content to audiences and/or by advertising. There is private ownership of media corporations
and there are hierarchical structures with a clear power differential that creates
influential decision-making actors and less influential roles as well as a division of
labour within media organizations.
The alternatives are grassroots media organizations. In such systems, there is collective
ownership and consensus decision-making by those who work in the organization,
no hierarchies and authorities, symmetric power distribution, no external private ownership,
but economic self-management. There is a focus on non-commercial media that are
not financed by advertisements or commodity sale, but by donations, public funding,
private resources, or no cost-strategies. The division of labour is sublated: the roles of
authors, designers, publisher, printers, and distributors are overlapping.
In traditional media, distribution is a form of marketing that makes use of high-tech
distribution, marketing and public relations departments, specialists and strategies, sales
departments, advertisements, and distribution contracting. In alternative media, also
technologies that allow easy and cheap reproduction are used. Strategies like anticopyright,
free access, or open content allow content to be shared, copied, distributed,
or changed in an open way. Furthermore, one also finds alternative distributors or alternative
institutions (e.g. alternative book stores or libraries) that focus on the distribution
of alternative titles.
At the reception level, a distinction between manipulative and critical reception can
be drawn. In the first case, content is interpreted in ways that create false consciousness.
In the second case, content is interpreted in ways that allow the recipients to question
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domination. An interpretation of media content is critical if the consumed form or
content causes subjective insights that allow the recipients to question certain forms
of domination, develop ideas of alternative models of existence that advance
co-operation and can potentially guide transformative actions and social struggles. The
important aspect here is that there is an objectivist judgement that co-operation is the
true, original, essential form of human existence (cf. Fuchs, 2008). Manipulation, in contrast
to critical reception, means that recipients interpret content and as a consequence
reality in forms that do not question domination, but further advance, legitimize or leave
untouched dominative/heteronomous structures. The categories of critical and manipulative
consciousness refer to states of consciousness.
Certainly, the ideal case within contemporary society is that all of these alternative
practices and structures are given. In such cases, alternative media are based on
self-managed citizen journalists’ production of critical content that is widely available,
distributed, and reaches a large audience, that critically receives content and becomes
itself active in critical journalistic production. In such a case, there is a dialectic of
self-managed media production and critical media structures. The ideal case for journalism
is a different societal framework, which allows all citizens to have the time,
skills, and resources so that they can all act as critical journalists and critical recipients
at the same time and their practices constitute a public sphere, in which decisions are
taken collectively in participatory grassroots processes. The distinction between production
and reception completely vanishes and alternative media become the standard
way of doing media. It is easily imaginable that such a vision requires the establishment
of a participatory democracy and of a co- operative society.
To focus strictly on prefigurative politics in media practices means idealizing the
limited possibilities and constraints that alternative media production is facing within
contemporary society. Furthermore, self-managed practices can also be used to advance
highly repressive (e.g. fascist) content. Hence in the approach advanced in this study, the
focus is more on content and form – media products. This is not to argue that process is
unimportant, but that a minimum requirement for speaking of an alternative medium is
critical content or critical form. If audiences critically interpret uncritical mainstream
media content, one cannot speak of an alternative medium, but of critical reception practices.
Given a focus on critical media products, also mainstream media under certain
conditions can be considered as alternative media. The existence of a critical product
is a necessary condition in order to speak of a medium as critical medium, but certainly
it is desirable that as many other alternative qualities are achieved as possible. The pity is
that under the given capitalist structures, it is not easily possible to achieve all of these
alternative visions and practices. To strictly focus on self-managed processes, anticommercialism,
etc. means ignoring the problems of alternative media production and
naı¨vely arguing that an alternative society can already be created within an overall
repressive totality. In the framework at hand, citizen journalism, self-managed ownership,
alternative distribution, and critical reception are desirable qualities of alternative
media, but not necessary conditions.
A theory of critical media was already anticipated in Marx’s writings on the press. For
Marx, the essence of the press is that it is critical, not commercial. ‘The writer, of course,
must earn in order to be able to live and write, but he must by no means live and write to
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earn ... The primary freedom of the press lies in not being a trade’ (Marx, 1842: 71). So
the argument is that capitalist structures are detrimental to free critical expression in
the press. Marx’s argument shows that the goal is a free press in a co-operative, noncapitalist
society.
The notion of critique that underlies the concept of alternative media is the Marxian
one as laid out in the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man –
hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased,
enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot be better described than by
the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They
want to treat you as human beings! (Marx, 1844: 385)
Critique here is understood as radical humanism, orientation on human essence, and as
opposition to all domination. I argue that Marxian critique is not only an economic critique
that ignores non-economic forms of domination based on, for example, gender,
race, ethnicity, nation, etc., but that it is a form of critique in which all forms of domination
are seen as being unjustified and unjust. In such an account, all non-economic domination
is based on and articulated with economic domination.
Critical media are critical because of five qualities. The first quality of critical media
is negation of negation at the content level. The content expresses an interest and tries to
pay attention to the realization of suppressed possibilities of societal development. Such
media do not accept existing social structures as they are, they are not interested in society
as it is, but in what it could be and could become. Their goal is the strengthening of
co-operation and participation and the creation of a participatory, co-operative society.
Hence underlying is the judgement that co-operation and participation are more essential,
true, and desirable than competition and exclusion (Fuchs, 2008). Critical content
deconstructs ideologies that claim that something cannot be changed and shows potential
counter-tendencies and alternative modes of development. Critical media are negative in
so far as they relate phenomena to societal problems and what society has failed to
become and to tendencies that question and contradict the dominant and dominative
mode of operation and hence have the potential to become positive forces of social
change towards the better. That the negative antagonisms are sublated into positive
results is not an automatism, but depends on the realization of practical forces of change
that have the potential to rise from inside the systems in question in order to produce a
transcendental outside that becomes a new whole. Critical media aim to advance social
struggles that transform society towards the realization of co-operative potentials.
The second quality of critical media is negation of negation at the form level. The
form of critical media products challenges human consciousness so that imagination
is potentially advanced and suppressed possibilities of development can potentially be
imagined.
The third quality of critical media is dialectical realism at the content level. Critical
media content is both dialectical and realistic. First of all, it is based on the realistic
assumption that there is a world outside of cognition that can be perceived, analyzed,
published, criticized, and changed. The task for critical media is to uncover and reveal
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the essence behind existence that is ideologically distorted. Critical media analyze social
phenomena not based on instrumental reason and one-dimensional logic. They operate:
(1) under the assumption that phenomena do not have linear causes and effects, but are
contradictory, open, dynamic, and carry certain development potentials in them; and (2)
based on the insight that there are not only opportunities or only risks inherent in social
phenomena, but also contradictory tendencies that pose both positive and negative
potentials at the same time that are realized or suppressed by human social practice. Dialectic
analysis in this context means complex dynamic thinking, realism, an analysis of
real possibilities and a dialectic of pessimism and optimism.
The fourth quality of critical media is dialectical realism at the form level. Dialectical
realism (form) mean that the form involves rupture, change, non-identity, dynamics, and
the unexpected – the form is itself contradictory.
The fifth quality of critical media is the materialistic expression of the interests of the
dominated at the content level. Critical media content is materialistic in the sense that it
addresses phenomena and problems not in terms of absolute ideas and predetermined
societal development, but in terms of resource distribution and social struggles. They are
based on the insight that the basic resources are highly unequally divided in contemporary
society. Critical media in one or the other respect take the standpoint of the
oppressed or exploited classes and consider that structures of oppression and exploitation
benefit certain classes at the expense of others and hence should be transformed.
Partisanship for the oppressed is an aspect of alternative media that was expressed by
Marx in his writings on the press. The press should act as ‘the public watchdog, the tireless
denouncer of those in power, the omnipresent eye, the omnipresent mouthpiece of
the people’s spirit that jealously guards its freedom’ (Marx, 1849: 231), ‘it is the duty of
the press to come forward on behalf of the oppressed in its immediate neighbourhood’,
the ‘first duty of the press now is to undermine all the foundations of the existing political
state of affairs’ (p. 234). For Marx, the press is ‘rooted in the people and honestly sympathises
with all the latter’s hopes and fears, love and hatred, joys and sorrows’ (Marx,
1843: 153). The good, true press would express ‘actual reality’ and ‘public opinion’, the
bad press, reality ‘as it would like it to be’ and opinion which distorts reality (p. 156). For
Marx, publicity means that the ‘real matter’ is being reported to ‘the real public’, ‘the
living and actually present public’ (Marx, 1842: 44).
Critical media show how the two competing forces of competition and co-operation
result in class formation and produce potentials for the dissolution of exploitation and
oppression. They are based on the judgement that co-operation is more desirable than
competition (Fuchs, 2008), which is just another way of saying that structures of exploitation
and oppression need to be questioned, criticized and sublated. Critical media are
interested in why there is a difference between actuality and potentiality, existence and
essence, and aim at finding ways of bridging this difference. They aim at and express the
need for the establishment of a co-operative, participatory society. The ethical dimension
is not unfounded, but grounded in the essence of society as such. Its transcendence is
constituted by the immanence of society, co-operative human potentials (Fuchs, 2008).
Critical media product content shows suppressed possibilities of existence,
antagonisms of reality, potentials for change. It questions domination, expresses the
standpoints of the oppressed and dominated groups and individuals and argues for the
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advancement of a co-operative society. Critical media product form aims at advancing
imagination, it is dialectical because it involves dynamics, non-identity, rupture, and the
unexpected.
Non-commercial, small-scale grassroots structures that use alternative distribution
forms might be an advantage in situations where media aim to mobilizing local communities
and for the self-organization of concerned citizens who can become media producers
by themselves. Professionalized structures that aim at high circulation rates and at
reaching the masses might be more suitable in situations where media aim at largescale
societal transformation and the transformation of the consciousness of manipulated
and simple-minded people (the raising of awareness, complex thinking, and critical consciousness).
Both strategies can also be combined as the example of anti-apartheid media
given by Tho¨rn (2007) shows.
There is no binary distinction between the two sides presented in Table 1. Alternative
media only in the area of content are necessarily on the alternative side, but they can also
make use of mainstream strategies and structures. Particularly in order to reach larger
audiences, alternative media should not see themselves as fully opposed to commercial
strategies and professionalized marketing, there is the potential to use these mechanism
to produce and distribute progressive content. Herbert Marcuse has in this context spoken
of counterinstitutions that make use of existing structures in order to transcend these
structures and overcome the problem of weak diffusion and inferior quality:
working against the established institutions, while working in them, but not simply by ‘boring
from within,’ rather by ‘doing the job,’ learning (how to program and read computers, how to
teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how
to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time
preserving one’s own consciousness in working with the others . . . [Counterinstitutions] have
long been an aim of the movement, but the lack of funds was greatly responsible for their
weakness and their inferior quality. They must be made competitive. This is especially important
for the development of radical, ‘free’ media . . . They can be competitive, that is to say,
apt to counteract Establishment education, not only where they fill a vacuum or where their
quality is not only different but also superior. The collection of large funds for the operation of
effective counterinstitutions requires compromises. (Marcuse, 1972: 55f)
The notion of counterinstitutions shows that critical media have an institutional context.
In the next section, this aspect of critical media will be taken up by discussing critical
media’s relation to the public sphere.
Critical Media and the Counter Public Sphere
Alternative media have the potential to stimulate public debate (Downing, 2001: 27–35).
They are not just media, but media embedded in society. One needs to analyze them
together with their societal context in order to avoid media essentialism. Therefore critical
media should be seen as part of a wider political context. In this respect, discussion
of how the notion of the public sphere relates to critical media is required.
Fuchs 183
183
The book on the counter-public sphere by Negt and Kluge has resulted in general discussion
(e.g. Jameson, 1988) and discussion within the alternative media discourse
(Downing, 2002: 29; Downey and Fenton, 2003; Sholle, 1995). A superficial reading can
create the impression that their account is not very different from subjective notions of
alternative media because both approaches have a strong focus on the production process
of the media. But for subjective notions of alternative media, the focus is on any type of
media production that takes place outside of the established mass media, whereas for
Negt and Kluge, such processes are only part of counter-public spheres if they are an
expression of the interests of the dominated. For subjectivists, grassroots do-ityourself
production processes are at the heart of alternative media. They focus on the
degree of democracy of production. Negt and Kluge are interested in left-wing media,
i.e. control of the intellectual means of production and the actual production of
counter-ideas by the political left. Negt and Kluge do not exclude participatory production
and prosumption/produsage, but they understand self-organization not primarily as
prosumption, but as the constitution of critical organizations that are autonomous from
capitalist ideologies. For some approaches, also right-wing media content is a kind of
alternative medium, whereas Negt and Kluge exclude all media and media content from
the notion of proletarian public spheres, if they are not part of the political left. Negt and
Kluge focus on the control of the intellectual means of production independent of the
bourgeoisie, not on organizational democracy and prosumption/produsage of ideas.
Negt’s and Kluge’s notion of a counter-public sphere, if applied to the media, is close
to the ideal type model of critical media outlined in Table 1. Both focus on left-wing content
and the control of production structures by the political left (Negt and Kluge, 1972:
143). Both stress cultural counter-products and relations of production/control of means
of intellectual production (pp. 427, 432). My model, different from that of Negt and
Kluge, is based on a more systematic notion of communication that distinguishes an
actor-level and a structural level of social systems, whereas Negt and Kluge have a relatively
unordered and specific way of theorizing that lacks general foundations. Also,
they do not describe the relation of production process and products of the proletarian
public sphere as a dialectic, a structure-agency-dialectic. Critical media can be seen as
the communicative dimension of the counter-public sphere.
Alternative media are frequently connected to protest movements that make use of
these media for information, communication, co-ordination, and co-operation processes.
Not in all cases can alternative media be connected to protest, because there are cases
where there are critical media, but no critical larger public. The totality of alternative
media constitutes an alternative public sphere, a sphere of protest and political discussion
that has an oppositional role and hence enhances the vividness of democracy. If there is
no opposition, there is no democracy. The counter-public spheres are at the same time
critical and affirmative (the latter because the existence of protest allows dominant
classes to argue that society is pluralistic and does not need to be changed). Counter
public-spheres are dialectical opponents of corporate media monopolies and political
opinion monopolies, which are monopolies in public opinion, and to political opinion
monopolies, which are either exercised though the domination of certain parties or
through the domination of hegemonic world-views. They have a dialectical role insofar
as they legitimate the existing dominative system by being oppositional, which allows
184 European Journal of Social Theory 13(2)
184
dominant groups to argue that the current political system is the best possible because it
is pluralistic, but at the same time they are an important locus of oppositional practices
that can be the germ form for the creation of a participatory democracy and a
co-operative society.
The notion of the proletariat tends to be associated with industrial wage labour. One
can suppose that the nature of the proletariat has changed since 1972, when Negt and
Kluge published their book, due to the rise of service and knowledge labour, neoliberal
individualism, the weakening of labour vis-a`-vis capital, the globalization of production,
and the rise of new social movements. The notion of the proletariat therefore needs to be
updated. Hardt and Negri use the terms ‘multitude’ (Hardt and Negri, 2004) and ‘social
worker’ (Negri, 1988) to stress that the exploitation of the commons of society has
become a central aspect of surplus value generation. Based on this insight, one can argue
that it is politically wise to expand the notion of the exploited class so that it is not
restricted to industrial wage labour, but also includes the unemployed, houseworkers,
migrant workers, developing countries, retirees, students, precarious workers, precarious
self-employment, and knowledge workers (Fuchs, 2008: 195–209; Fuchs 2010). One can
use the notion of the proletariat to describe the unity of diversity of conditions and
experiences of the exploitation of the producers of the commons by capital, but no longer
the notion of the industrial wage labour class.
Critical media are media of the multitude, media of an updated proletarian counterpublic
sphere. They express the experiences of the dominated and emerge in the process
of struggles and are a form of class struggle and proletarian organization. Whereas in the
1970s and 1980s, political struggles were strongly oriented on the recognition of marginalized
identities (women, gays and lesbians, transsexuals, etc.), and the recognition of
nature as a value (ecological movement), these specific struggles have to a certain point
become unified by the re-emergence of class issues due to the rise of strong socioeconomic
inequality. The anti-corporate movement and the movement for democratic
globalization constitute a movement of movements. This movement unifies particular
struggles and refocuses on class issues by questioning corporate domination (Fuchs,
2008: 290–4). Therefore, the notions of the proletariat and the proletarian public sphere,
of which critical media are part, are again useful today.
One should add here that there can be and are situations in society, where the consciousness
of the dominated class is manipulated and one only finds a weakly developed
multitude. In such situations, critical media that express the experiences of these masses,
although they are not politically conscious of their being, are still necessary and will take
on different organizational forms from situations of heavy class struggles or revolutions.
There is a difference between critical media in class struggles and critical media that aim
at organizing class struggles and class consciousness.
The notion of the proletarian public sphere advances a relatively unified public sphere
as a political goal. The proletarian public sphere, just like the proletariat, will not exist
forever, but is a self-sublating movement that aims at a classless society and a nonstratified
public sphere. Certain scholars have criticized the unified conceptions of the
public sphere, especially Habermas’s account. Women, gays and lesbians, and ethnicities
would have been excluded from the public sphere, it would be more promising to
struggle in multiple subaltern counter-publics against oppression than in one unified
Fuchs 185
185
sphere, and an egalitarian society should be based on a plurality of public arenas in order
to be democratic and multicultural (Eley, 1992; Fraser, 1992; Roberts and Crossley,
2004). Habermas agrees that his early account, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere (Habermas, 1989), published in 1962, has ignored proletarian, feminist,
and other public spheres (Habermas, 1992: 425–30). Habermas therefore speaks of ‘a
pluralistic, internally much differentiated mass public’ (Habermas, 1992: 438). The danger
of pluralistic publics without unity is that in struggles they will focus on mere reformist
identity politics without challenging the whole, which negatively affects the lives of
all subordinated groups, and that it ignores that in an egalitarian society common communication
media are needed to guarantee cohesion and the solidarity that is needed for a
strong democracy. Postmodernists and post-Marxists are so occupied with stressing difference
that they do not realize that difference can become repressive if it turns into a
plurality without unity. Certainly, the counter-public sphere and an egalitarian public
sphere should be based on unity in diversity, but the central aspect is that there needs
to be unity in diversity in order to struggle for participatory democracy and to maintain
this condition once it is achieved.
As to the role of alternative media in the counter-public sphere, this means that it is
preferable and more effective to have a few widely accessible and widely consumed
broad critical media than many small-scale special interest media that support the fragmentation
of struggles. Nicholas Garnham argues in this context for the need of a single
public sphere and says that the postmodernists risk ‘cultural relativism’ if they do not see
that democracy is in need of ‘some common normative dimensions’ and ‘more generalized
media’ (Garnham, 1992: 369). Jeffrey Alexander (2006: 276f) suggests to Fraser
and Eley that ‘they fail to do justice to the universalizing premises of civil norms’ and
to ‘universalistic solidarity’ in the civil sphere. Social movements and critical media that
are immersed in emancipatory struggles need to be able to initiate large-scale political
communication processes in order to transform society. Otherwise they can easily be
ignored or will get lost in self-contained fragmentation.
Defining critical media (discussed above) and situating them in the political environment
(discussed above) are two important tasks. Another related task is to distinguish
various types of alternative media. Therefore a typology of how to distinguish different
types of critical media will be discussed in the next section.
Types of Critical Media
Given a notion of critical media, the task arises to further elaborate this concept and to
show if there are subcategories of the basic category. If social theory advances from the
general to the particular in order to increase the complexity of theories and the understanding
of reality, then applying this method to the notion of critical media requires
us to discuss subtypes of critical media. Therefore a typology of critical media will be
introduced in this section.
Table 2 presents a typology and examples of alternative media. Media are classified
according to the body parts that are mainly utilized for production and reception and
according to whether production and consumption are temporally synchronous or
asynchronous and based on spatial co-presence or communication at a distance.
186 European Journal of Social Theory 13(2)
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Table2.Atypologyofalternativemedia
MediaProductionReceptionFormatsTimeSpaceAlternativemediaExamples
Print/VisualHandsEyesNewspapers,journals,books,
pamphlets,comics,satirical
prints,flyers,visualarts,graffiti,
dress,textiles,pins,buttons,
stickers,murals
AsynchronousDistanceAlternativepress,
criticalart
MotherJones,Oz,BayGuardian,The
Nation,LeMondeDiplomatique,
NewStatesman,FifthEstate,Class
War;DuaneHanson,JosephBeuys
AudiomediaMouthEarsRadio,telephoneSynchronousDistanceFreeradio,independent
radio,communityradio,
pirateradio
PacificaRadioNetwork(KPFABer-
keley,KPFKLosAngeles,KPFT
Houston,WBAINewYork,WPFW
WashingtonDC,NationalFederation
ofCommunityBroadcasters,Grass-
rootsRadioCoalition
AudiomediaMouthEarsConversation,talks,
lectures,songs
SynchronousPresenceRadicalsinging,protest
singing
‘Oh,freedom’(abolitionist),‘We
ShallOvercome’,
AudiomediaMouth,bodyEarsConcerts,choirSynchronousPresenceAlternativemusic
concerts,protestsong
concerts
Seealternativemusic,recorded
protestsongs
AudiomediaMouth,bodyEarsRecords,radio,AsynchronousDistanceAlternativemusic,
recordedprotestsongs
Mogwai,GodspeedYou!Black
Emperor,BillyBragg,RobertWyatt,
‘ThePreacherandtheSlave’(JoeHill,
socialistic),‘Bombtrack’(Rageagainst
theMachine,socialjustice),‘Soundof
DaPolice’(KRSOne,Anti-Racism),
‘KillthePoor’(DeadKennedys)
Audio-visualmediaMouth,bodyEyes,earsTheatre,performanceSynchronousPresenceCriticaltheatreYouthInternationalTheatre(guerilla
theatre),Brecht’sepictheatre
Audio-visualmediaMouth,bodyEyes,earsFilm,videoAsynchronousDistanceIndependentcinema,
undergroundfilm,avant-
gardefilm,amateurvideos
Crash(PaulHaggis,2004),filmsby
Jean-LucGodard,RainerWerner
Fassbinder,AndyWarhol
Audio-visualmediaMouth,bodyEyes,earsLivetelevisionSynchronousDistancePublicaccesstelevisionManhattanNeighborhoodNetwork
InternetHand,mouth,
body
Eyes,earsDigitaltext,digitalaudio,digital
video,realtimetext/audio/video
chat,onlineradio,onlineTV
Synchronousor
asynchronous
DistanceAlternativeonlinemediaIndymedia,Alternet
187
Given the condition that product form and content are considered decisive in the
alternative character of media, one cannot argue that all community-produced, noncommercial,
‘free’, independent, self-managed, self-organized, self-owned, etc. media
are alternative, although many of them are because they feature critical content. They
are more likely to be critical than conventional mass media, but they are not automatically
critical.
The central characteristic utilized in this typology is the one of alternative, critical
products, where there is a distinction between critical form and critical content. At least
one of the two aspects of a media product needs to be given. Critical form is possible
without critical content. Critical content is possible without critical form. But both can
also be present simultaneously. There are alternative media where form is generally
more important than content, and vice versa. In those media that are types of art (such
as theatre, literature, visual arts, films, music, concerts), form is of specific importance
because art lives through non-identical forms that aim at strengthening imagination.
Nonetheless, forms of critical political art that are critical at the content level are also
alternative media, there is no strict focus on the form level. That is also the reason why
in Table 2, on the one hand, examples of critical media are given that are more contentbased
and, on the other, examples that are more form-based are shown.
Alternative media that are based on critical forms are critical in the sense that these
forms’ social function is that they are functionless (Adorno, 1970: 336f). They are radically
focused on artistic forms, their functionless character can be considered a protest
against the capitalist world of instrumental reason. Herbert Marcuse (1978) argues that
art can only be a societal factor as autonomous art. Art would be a part of society, but one
that transcends capitalist society by constituting an autonomous sphere of aesthetical
forms that transcend capitalism. The beauty of art is not a portrayal of society as it is,
but a metaphor for society as it could be. The notion of the autonomy and functionless
character of art that Adorno and Marcuse described can be generalized not just for art,
but for all alternative media products (including also expression in the area of popular
culture, not just the high arts). Alternative media at the form level of the products have
a radical potential if they transcend their societal context and have the potential to
subvert experience. In the case of critical forms, the subversion of the experience of
capitalism is an indirect one, in the case of critical content it is a more direct one.
Conclusion
In this study, some theoretical reflections on the under-researched category of alternative
media were developed. It was shown that there are, on the one hand, approaches that
stress process and action aspects of alternative media, so that alternative media are considered
self-organized, citizen-controlled, self-managed, self-owned, non-commercial,
non-advertising media. On the other hand, there are approaches that put more stress
on critical product content that formulates visions of an alternative world beyond
capitalism.
A model that considers a dialectic of structure and actions as the foundation of mass
media was introduced. As central dimensions of mass media journalistic production,
media product structures, organizational media structures, distribution structures, and
188
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reception practices were identified. Based on this model, citizens journalism and critical
reception were identified as potential actor level aspects and critical form, critical content,
grassroots media organizations, and alternative distribution were considered as
potential structural aspects of alternative media.
There is the danger that small-scale local alternative projects will develop into psychological
self-help initiatives without political relevance that are more bourgeois individualist
self-expressions than political change projects. As an alternative concept, the
notion of alternative media as critical media was introduced. Critical media product content
shows suppressed possibilities of existence, describes antagonisms of reality and
potentials for change, questions domination, expresses the standpoints of oppressed and
dominated groups and individuals, and argues for the advancement of a co-operative
society. Critical media product form aims at advancing imagination, it is dialectical
because it involves dynamics, non-identity, rupture, and the unexpected.
Based on the notion of critical media, Stuart Hall’s communication model, in which
there are three subjective relative forms of interpretation, was expanded by the two
objectivist categories of manipulative and critical reception. An interpretation of media
content is critical if the consumed form or content causes subjective insights that allow
the recipients to question certain forms of domination, develop ideas of alternative models
of existence that advance co-operation, and can potentially be guiding in transformative
actions and social struggles. It was argued that other dimensions besides the product
structures of alternative media are certainly desirable, but should not be considered as
necessary conditions.
Alternative media research is an under-resourced, under-represented, and underresearched
field – the neglected spot in communication and media studies. This article,
it is hoped, will contribute to the discourse of this alternative research field. The hope
that remains now is that with the continuing rise of the importance of the Internet, theoretical
and empirical alternative media research will gain more importance and will
finally be acknowledged as an important field by academia and the social sciences.
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Bio
Christian Fuchs is Associate Professor at the University of Salzburg and member of the Unified
Theory of Information Research Group. He holds a venia docendi in ICTs and society. His fields
of research are: social theory, critical theory, media theory, media & society, digital media &
society, information society studies. He is author of more than 120 scholarly publications, including
the monographs Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age (2008, Routledge),
Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies (2010, Routledge). He is co-editor of The
Internet & Surveillance (2011, Routledge), together with Kees Boersma, Anders Albrechtslund,
Marisol Sandoval. He is managment committee member of the EU COST Action ‘‘Living in
Surveillance Societies’’ and co-ordinator of the research project ‘‘Social Networking Sites in the
Surveillance Society’’ (funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF)
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