https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8951-2218
![Sample our Communication Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, 2013 & 2014 volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5927/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Information-Science2.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Public debate about the US culture wars reached a rancorous peak in the 1990s. At the same time, a no less contested scholarly debate was taking place over the significance of the culture wars, with many critics of the period dismissing the culture wars as an elite affair – a ‘war of words’ – that mattered little to ordinary Americans. Meanwhile, recent accounts of the culture wars have declared them ‘over’. In this paper, I revisit the culture wars through the lens of far right website Breitbart.com, to show how Breitbart deploys a ‘culture wars discourse’ that reinvigorates the key ideas that animated the US culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. The manifest political influence of sites such as Breitbart, I argue, represents a new development in the process by which cultural politics are increasingly framed by digital networked media.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mark Davis
Mark Davis researches and teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.