Amplifying Extremism

By Nikki Usher and Jessica Cherese Hagman

Within a week, a no-name Republican state representative from a town of 384 people in Illinois catapulted from obscurity to a prime-time appearance on Fox News' Ingraham Angle. This newly empowered politician, Darren Bailey, would go on to steer the pro-business Republican party in Illinois toward extremism. Democratic backsliding emerges across all levels of politics, but the threats posed by small-town politicians have been overshadowed by national-level politicians. This microstudy of a single politician's debut in the public eye showcases a novel approach to media corpus construction that combines proprietary and open databases, aggregated search tools, and targeted searching, and includes local, regional, and national news across digital-first, radio, news publishers, broadcast and cable television, and social media. The Element provides unique insights into how American journalism creates space for small-town extremists to gain power, especially given declines in local news.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1009668781
• ISBN13: 9781009668781
• Release Date: June 2025
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"