the power of populist style: comparing populist media, from fox news to the young turks, from cable to youtube, from right to left

Joint SMIT-DESIRE-ECHO Research Seminar with Reece Peck
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
6.10.23

This research seminar offers insights into why Fox News—conservative America’s number one news source—has been commercially successful and politically effective. Where existing explanations of Fox's appeal have stressed the network's conservative editorial slant, Dr. Reece Peck sheds light on the importance of its style as a generative mode of ideology. In addition to tracing Fox’s historical ascendancy, this talk compares the conservative cable giant with the progressive YouTube-based network the Young Turks (TYT). TYT stands as one of YouTube’s longest-running and most successful “news and politics” channels on the platform. This talk stresses the importance of style as an analytical category for studying modern news branding and political movements and argues that there is no inherent connection between media populism and political conservatism — even though today, thanks to US conservative media, many conflate the two.​

Reece Peck is an Associate Professor teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center and is the author of Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class (Cambridge, 2019). His research uses concepts and methods from sociology, political science, and media studies to examine populist rhetorical styles, partisan news, and tabloid media. In addition to providing commentary for outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Vice TV, Peck was among a select group of media scholars asked to provide written testimony to the Congressional Investigatory Committee on the January 6 Capitol riot.