Jason Mittell

[Commentary] The legacies of a right-wing broadcasting bubble have profoundly shaped our current political moment, and Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm is only one small piece of the puzzle. Even before Facebook became a primary source for political news, liberals and conservatives were getting their news from vastly different sources. as opponents of President-elect Donald Trump’s candidacy and eventual presidency rally to avoid “normalizing” his ideas and approach, the mainstreaming of conservative fake news is a clear case of the dangers of such normalization. As we increasingly accept inaccurate peddlers of politicized misinformation as “news,” we allow our citizenry to be horrifically misinformed as part of this new normal.

[Jason Mittell is a professor of film and media culture and American studies at Middlebury College. Chuck Tryon is an associate professor of English at Fayetteville State University.]

[Commentary] For months now, pundits and politicians have been waiting for Donald Trump to “pivot,” presumably moving away from his divisive, inflammatory rhetoric of the Republican primary and toward a more inclusive, mild demeanor for the general election. Since the first debate, we have seen a pivot, but not the one we’ve been waiting for: Trump has fully pivoted from presidential candidate to media mogul for a budding political entertainment movement.

This may seem like a strange transition for a presidential candidate to make, but recent events, and Trump’s reactions to them, suggest that his primary goal of building a lucrative audience has finally eclipsed his purported goal of building a winning electorate, with traditional allegiances to political party, fellow candidates, and even a running mate falling by the wayside. Trump’s recent behavior is almost certainly informed by a need to place blame for his looming defeat. But it’s also an amplification of a thread that’s always been present in his campaign, even back when his poll numbers were rising instead of plummeting.

[Jason Mittell is a professor of film and culture and American studies at Middlebury College]