Research Project - Alternative Media Ecosystems
At the core of this multi-year project are intense periods of data collection around US elections. Research began with the 2022 US midterm elections and has continued with each major election cycle. The next planned collection period will be the 2026 midterm elections. There are substantial ethnographic components to the project design (in-person observation, local immersion, and interviews). Data collected also includes significant media content, from broadcast transmissions at scale to legacy media and social media content. A key part of the project aim is to create tools for capturing and analyzing local streaming audio; there are currently no efforts or methods developed around capturing local broadcast emissions at scale.
Given this project’s on-the-ground nature and focus in highly conservative communities, outcomes of this project are also oriented toward bettering this research arena in the current political climate. First steps included an inaugural preconference at the 2024 American Sociological Association entitled ‘On-The-Ground Research with the Right in 2024’.
While the aim of this project is an eventual manuscript and public-facing , initial findings have been presented at several invited academic talks and conference venues. For example, I have presented findings on the journalistic roles and conflicted identities of rural talk radio stations at:
- Harvard University’s Politics and Social Change Workshop (26 September 2024)
- Association of Internet Researchers Conference (1 November 2024)
- Cambridge University’s Centre for Governance and Human Rights (24 February 2025)
This project has been supported by the EU’s Horizon Europe scheme, via a Marie Curie award, between 2024 and 2025. “Considering Rurality and Religion: Mapping an Alternative Media Ecosystem and Addressing Gaps in Misinformation Research” was awarded approximately $250,000 for two years.
Image from fieldwork conducted in November 2022, during the US midterm elections.