A Tale from the Right-Side
Despite the content of my most recent blogs, I cannot say that I have the greatest understanding of the political landscape. All these liberal, conservative, republican, democrat, left-wing, right-wing, all around-wing stories seem to mesh into one singular confusing category in my mind called “politics”. All I really know about American politics is that I don’t like Trump’s public persona. I expect a lot more professionalism out of the leader of one of the powerhouse countries of the world.
I have recently come across the self-proclaimed “news and commentary” network called Breitbart that preaches its content in a similar fashion to one of Trump’s tweets.
After scanning their Facebook page, the range of posts fascinated me. Most of them were politically related, but the titles often advertised much more opinion than fact on topics.
As a Creative Industries student at Ryerson University with personal interests in the film and media sectors, one title about a media company immediately stood out to me on their page. “CNN to Lay Off up to 50 Employees after Missing Revenue Targets”.
I clicked on the link and was redirected to their website, which vaguely reminded me of the site of E! Entertainment due to its colour scheme. After reading the first few sentences it became apparent that their posts were lead much more by emotion and personal bias than investigative journalism. Commenting on an article originally written in Vanity Fair, this report went on to ridicule CNN’s failure to meet their ambitious digital platform development goals. They made reference to a phenomenon called the “Trump Bump” in the first sentence (I had to research this; CNN has reportedly leveraged Trump’s presidency and the unusual happenings within the White House to their advantage, rewarding them with increased revenues over the last year) and noted that despite this success, they failed to meet digital growth targets. CNN reportedly missed their goals by “tens of millions of dollars”, though the legitimacy of these claims should not be overtly assumed as the information came from vaguely mentioned “insiders” rather than factual internal and financial documents.
You can read the Vanity Fair article here: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/cnn-prepares-for-dozens-of-layoffs
You can read the Breitbart commentary here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2018/02/12/report-cnn-lay-off-50-employees-missing-revenue-targets/
I backtracked my research and analyzed their Facebook page after reading the article. As previously mentioned, many of the posts on this page were politically related, coming as no surprise as they define themselves as being “far right” in their commentary. I went on to analyze the communities reactions.
The top “reactions” to the article also seemed to ridicule CNN. The brief description of the post refers to CNN as a “left-wing” news network, prime enemy #1 of the right-wing audience Breitbart entertains. The top emotions to the post being Love and Haha show that the readers seem to agree with this ideology. I noticed that comments on the post tended to point fingers at the left. Very little attention was paid to the content within the actual article.
It seems that Breitbart readers were more interested in picking a fight with their enemies to the left as opposed to debating their beliefs about the CNN network and the events that lead up to these internal structural changes (at least on their Facebook platform).
Based on my analysis, I was able to conclude that Breitbart is more so a commentary network than a news network (like CP24, etc.). Much of their content is politically related and is presented featuring jabs at the other political side. These jabs seem to excite their audience, promoting often unfiltered commentary based on opinions and biases in their comments.
Because of my generally liberal beliefs, I had never come across the Breitbart News Network before searching for them myself. The titles of the articles Breitbart creates would probably match searches of right-wing individuals and I can see how these articles might pop into their filter bubbles. People who fall under the right-wing political belief category might feel welcomed by Breitbarts audience, who seem less than afraid to share their personal biases on the page. The informal commentary format and enticing article titles in Breitbarts content seem to invite participation by their audience in a demogogue-y fashion, appealing to their desires by posting content that shows a fault in the left-wing and builds up the importance of decisions on the right.
The Breitbart CNN article contained all of the aforementioned elements: a failure in a prominent news network of the left-side (a popular enemy), an enticing title, and informal information presented with opinionated commentary. These elements seem to appeal to Breitbart readers, resulting in the article being highly shared among its community. The reactions and comments by the Breitbart audience portray them as highly opinionated and eager. They find comfort in Breitbarts posts as they relate to the commentaries shared. I believe these elements significantly contribute to the popularity of Breitbart’s posts among its audience and have created a community of active participants. The prominence of left-sided media coverage in popular news sources makes alternative networks all the more popular online. Though I don’t agree with much of Breitbart’s commentaries, I do believe they host an important platform for the more conservative thinkers of the world. Everyone deserves to have a place where they can feel like they belong, and to some people that might be at Breitbart News Network.
