Losing Control: Seasonality of the News During Democratic Deconsolidation

News of politics possesses features analogous to seasons: media storms, news waves, and affective news streams amplify crisis in response to social disturbances. Seasonality implies a dynamic in which news media are caught up in forces seemingly beyond their control. This essay demonstrates the productivity of this approach in three respects. Seasonality provides a new way of grasping journalistic complicity in democratic deconsolidation, an interpretative lens for why professional autonomy is compromised, and the basis for a normative rationale on why the responsible press must retake control of the news. We explain how three elements of seasonal political news contribute to deconsolidation. Anticipation and recurrence of conflict constitute fulfillment of expectations about the desirability of democracy. A subsequent section illustrates how seasonality manifested in anticipation of “the dread election” of 2024. The heuristic value of seasonality is also demonstrated in how deconsolidation is experienced by journalists and their audiences. We explicate temporal patterns that fluctuate in affective intensity in ways that promote a perception of politics spiraling. The analysis then turns to implications of seasonality for journalism as a trustee of political conflict. A consideration of underlying epistemologies generates insights for making the news more resistant to seasonal disorder.