Considering Alternative Media in a Digital Age

H. F. Pimlott's Wars of Position? "Marxism Today," Cultural Politics and the Remaking of the Left Press, 1979-90 offers a rich cultural-materialist framework for considering the relationship between cultural form, media production, and politics. She draws on Raymond Williams's understanding of the means of communication as means of production and insists on a focus on the material basis upon which ideas are produced and circulated, with an emphasis on processes and practices. Such processes and practices include commodification, marketization, platformization, contentification, and professionalization-all generative for understanding the opportunities and challenges of participating in alternative media in a digital age. This reflection considers continuities and changes in the production, circulation, and consumption of alternative media in a time of social media, tech platforms, declining legacy media, and consolidated corporate power.