If you've ever wondered how the right-wing media ecosystem works and why it's effective, try pondering of it as a type of improvisational theater or improv.
In the wake of the 2024 US election, each peculiar people and political pundits have sought to make sense of the outcomes and the related commentary that many Americans look like experiencing very different realities. These realities are very shaped different media ecosystems.
Democrats are inclined to trust institutional media Network news greater than Republicans. In contrast, Republicans have developed what they see as a more trustworthy and explicitly partisan alternative media ecosystem that has rapidly evolved and thrived within the Internet age.
Cultivating robust alternative media has been a political strategy the law for a long time. Given the interactive nature of social media and the fitting's continued investment in digital media, the right-wing media ecosystem has change into a highly participatory space stuffed with influencers, political elites and audiences.
These actors engage in conversations all year long that encourage and adapt political messages. The collaborations should not rigidly predetermined, but quite improvised, facilitated by the interactivity of digital media.
For all these reasons we, as Researcher from Information ecosystems and influencer culture find it useful to view right-wing media as a sort of improvisational theater. This metaphor helps us understand the social and digital structure, culture and persuasive power of right-wing influence Reshaping politics within the US and all over the world.
Elements of improvisation in right-wing media
Influencers are the performers on this real-life improv show that plays out on a stage of social media news feeds, podcasts, cable newsrooms and partisan online media. Performers include political pundits and media personalities, in addition to a dynamic group of online opinion leaders who often rise from the audience to the stage, including by recognizing and exploiting the dynamics of digital media.
These influencers collaborate and perform a wide range of roles based on a set of informal rules and performance conventions: they share vague but emotionally resonant memes, “I'm just asking questions“opposed to each other, trolling a journalist, “proving” claims with data or photos – sometimes taken out of context – while concurrently engaging with one another’s content.
Just like improvising, artists work every single day to seek out play with their audiences, on web forums, and with one another. The “Game“In improvisation, an idea or story with a novel element around which a performance revolves. Once a compelling game is found, the performers up the ante, one other improvisational concept through which the motion is intensified and expanded.
The actors follow a loose script and work together towards a typical goal. Digital media environments provide additional infrastructure—the platform functions, networks, and algorithms—that shape performances.
Their performances, each individually and in concert with each other, help influencers attract and curate an audience with which they’re highly connected. As in improv shows, the political performers may use a method called a recall: Reference to a previous line, exchange, or game with which the audience is familiar. Or the performers reply to calls from an engaged audience who cheer, taunt and guide the actors because the show progresses. Audiences also can encourage a whole skit by bringing a story to the eye of influencers or politicians.
From this attitude, influence not only flows from influencers on stage and out to the audience, but in addition from the audience to the influencers. This dynamic makes the right-wing media ecosystem extremely reactive. The feedback is immediate and the fitting “parts” get laughs and likes. Influencers – and political leaders – can quickly adapt their messages to the tastes, preferences and grievances of their audience, in addition to the events and trends of the day, without being affected by the lag of traditional news media.
Actors and audiences in right-wing media also engage in transgressive, controversial and even offensive scenes, testing the boundaries of their shared preferences, expectations and – for the political actors – ideologies.
Like many improv shows, these performances feel intimate and authentic. The audience can discuss with the performers after and sometimes in the course of the show. They can be invited “on stage” when an influencer highlights their content.
It could also be only a single scene, but there may be also a possibility for lucky, savvy or persistent contributors to change into a part of the influencer theater. This increases the motivation to participate, the thrill and the audience's feeling of really being a part of the show.
“They eat the pets”
An example of right-wing media improvising got here in the autumn of 2024 with then-candidate Donald Trump baselessly claimed from a debate about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Before Trump mentioned them, rumors about pet eating were circulating in local Facebook groups in Springfield. These claims were reinforced by a neighborhood neo-Nazi leader discussed the subject in a recorded town hall meeting that was shared on apps like Telegram and Gab. Influencers who monitor these channels elevated the storyFind a brand new game with a novel element.
A Reddit post featuring a photograph of a person holding a bird walking down the road was taken out of context by influencers and incorrectly used as “evidence”. of immigrants eating pets. Memes, especially those created using artificial intelligence, spread quickly and caught the eye of Politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greenewho shared it. This raised the stakes of the improv game by connecting these smaller memes to a bigger political narrative concerning the must stop migration on the southern border.
The improvisation reached its peak when Trump and then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance increased their claims in the course of the week of the September debate. They presented the claims with each seriousness and a rather tongue-in-cheek awareness that the story wasn't necessarily about immigrants but concerning the attention the narrative attracted. Vance even admitted that the entire thing “turn out to be wrong.” This improvisation wasn’t about truthfulness.
Growing body of research
The metaphor of right-wing media as improvisation emerged through research, conversations and collaboration facilitated by the University of Washington Center for an informed publicwhere we work.
One of us, Kate Starbird, and colleagues examined the role of political influencers in election denial rumors after the 2020 election and located that these were right-wing political campaigns Participation efforts that were largely improvised. In related work, media researcher Anna Beers described how a “Theater of influencers“on the fitting may very well be identified through their interactions with a typical audience.
PhD student Stephen Prochaska and colleagues built on sociologists Arlie Hochschild's work to characterize the Production of election fraud narratives in 2020 as “deep storytelling” – the telling of stories with strong emotional resonance – between right-wing influencers and their online audiences.
In her study of right-wing influencers, considered one of us, Danielle Lee Tomson, described this performative collaboration between influencers like Kayfabea performance convention in skilled wrestling through which wrestlers agree on a story arc before what appears to be an actual wrestling match.
These studies all depend on different theories and use different methodologies, but agree that improvisation, style, and participatory audiences are integral to the success of right-wing media ecosystems.
A convincing performance
In political improvisation, factuality is less necessary than the convincing nature of the performance, the actors, the main story arc, and the aesthetics. The storylines could be compelling, engaging and participatory, allowing audiences to play their very own role in a grand epic of American activism.
When you take a look at it this manner, the persuasive power of the right-wing media on the common American becomes more apparent. When there may be a 24/7 chorus of collaborative web influencers speaking on to their audience, institutional media feels too distant and disinterested to have a comparable impact.
image credit : theconversation.com