Amplifying Extremism

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.