Zombie Media 77
honour from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, preparing the way for accusations of fake news a decade later.
The relative compliance of many media outlets (either willingly or because of the fear of government coercion) increasingly saw willingness
among consumers to try alternative sources. The fact that traditional
print media and even broadcasters to a lesser degree were in decline was
reflected in part in a vituperative and, ultimately, irrelevant argument
in the USA regarding the status of journalists versus bloggers. For the
better part of a decade, some established media outlets criticised the proliferation of online-only sites – some of which, such as the Huffington
Post, were growing into substantial publishing operations, for all that
they relied upon armies of amateur rather than professional bloggers.
As newspapers in particular, willingly or otherwise, adopted many of
the techniques of blogging, the distinction became increasingly irrelevant:
by 2012, Huffington Post contributors, alongside another online-only
site, Politico, were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for articles relating to life
for soldiers returning from conflict and Matt Wuerker’s political cartoons. Similarly, in 2014, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Obsidian Finance
Group vs. Crystal Cox that even if not working for the institutional
press, bloggers were entitled to First Amendment protection. Events such
as the court ruling and Pulitzer Prizes indicated just how dispersed the
influence of the “institutional press” had become in the decade and a
half following the emergence of citizen journalism.
Until this point, the emergence of alternative journalism deploying
new technologies to reach wider audiences with their versions of the
facts could still probably be considered to share some similarities with
the countercultural approaches of the underground press of the 1960s.
There were some signs, however, that the new grassroots journalism –
which now had very good reasons not to trust the mainstream media –
would not be confined to the left. The Drudge Report, one of the first
political scandal sheets online, was devoted to undermining the Democrats, while the establishment of the Fox News Channel – hardly
grassroots in the way described by Gillmor and others – would provide a template for reporting that would reinvigorate the right in the
twenty-first century. The final step for the emergence of the alt-right,
however, emerged in an extremely surprising form: that of computer
games journalism.
The very loose confederacy of hacktivists, trolls, and game player that
operated under the tag, “Gamergate,” has been extremely important as a
testing ground for many of the techniques that were later to be deployed
in the 2016 election. Its ostensible origin lies in a blog post (later discredited) written by Eron Gjoni in August 2014, claiming that a former
girlfriend of his, Zoe Quinn, had gained favourable reviews for her 2013
game Depression Quest by sleeping with a journalist, Nathan Grayson,
who worked for the gaming website Kotaku. The pitiably trivial events
honour from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, preparing the way for accusations of fake news a decade later.
The relative compliance of many media outlets (either willingly or because of the fear of government coercion) increasingly saw willingness
among consumers to try alternative sources. The fact that traditional
print media and even broadcasters to a lesser degree were in decline was
reflected in part in a vituperative and, ultimately, irrelevant argument
in the USA regarding the status of journalists versus bloggers. For the
better part of a decade, some established media outlets criticised the proliferation of online-only sites – some of which, such as the Huffington
Post, were growing into substantial publishing operations, for all that
they relied upon armies of amateur rather than professional bloggers.
As newspapers in particular, willingly or otherwise, adopted many of
the techniques of blogging, the distinction became increasingly irrelevant:
by 2012, Huffington Post contributors, alongside another online-only
site, Politico, were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for articles relating to life
for soldiers returning from conflict and Matt Wuerker’s political cartoons. Similarly, in 2014, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Obsidian Finance
Group vs. Crystal Cox that even if not working for the institutional
press, bloggers were entitled to First Amendment protection. Events such
as the court ruling and Pulitzer Prizes indicated just how dispersed the
influence of the “institutional press” had become in the decade and a
half following the emergence of citizen journalism.
Until this point, the emergence of alternative journalism deploying
new technologies to reach wider audiences with their versions of the
facts could still probably be considered to share some similarities with
the countercultural approaches of the underground press of the 1960s.
There were some signs, however, that the new grassroots journalism –
which now had very good reasons not to trust the mainstream media –
would not be confined to the left. The Drudge Report, one of the first
political scandal sheets online, was devoted to undermining the Democrats, while the establishment of the Fox News Channel – hardly
grassroots in the way described by Gillmor and others – would provide a template for reporting that would reinvigorate the right in the
twenty-first century. The final step for the emergence of the alt-right,
however, emerged in an extremely surprising form: that of computer
games journalism.
The very loose confederacy of hacktivists, trolls, and game player that
operated under the tag, “Gamergate,” has been extremely important as a
testing ground for many of the techniques that were later to be deployed
in the 2016 election. Its ostensible origin lies in a blog post (later discredited) written by Eron Gjoni in August 2014, claiming that a former
girlfriend of his, Zoe Quinn, had gained favourable reviews for her 2013
game Depression Quest by sleeping with a journalist, Nathan Grayson,
who worked for the gaming website Kotaku. The pitiably trivial events