Conservative Consciousness and the Press: The Institutional Contribution to the Idea of the ‘Liberal Media’ in Right-Wing Discourse

Abstract

This article examines the construction of conservative consciousness toward the establishment press, namely the articulation of the idea of the liberal media. Using discursive institutionalism and Nancy Fraser’s critique of Habermas’s conception of the public sphere as a theoretical lens, it is argued that the liberal media bias critique was developed and solidified in what the author calls the ‘conservative counter-sphere’, a sub-public sphere for right-wing activists and thinkers. A content analysis of the conservative publication Human Events empirically demonstrates that right-wing news outlets provided a public space for the emerging modern conservative movement to articulate a hegemonic discourse and mode of thought about the seeming liberal bias of the mainstream media.