The Middle That Holds: C-SPAN, Media Realism, and the Future of Democratic Discourse in a Fragmented Landscape

In an era marked by ideological polarization, media spectacle, and the commodification of attention, this thesis investigates the role of C-SPAN as a counter-model to mainstream cable news networks, Fox News and MSNBC. While commercial media platforms often prioritize emotionally charged, ideologically framed content to maximize audience engagement, C-SPAN offers an alternative grounded in transparency, neutrality, and unfiltered access to the democratic process. Drawing on post-structuralist theoretical frameworks from Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Foucault, Jenkins, and Fisher, this study explores how C-SPAN both resists and is constrained by the structural forces of capitalist realism, media convergence, and the attention economy. Through comparative analysis, the thesis examines how Fox News and MSNBC engage in political myth-making, shaping public discourse through spectacle and narrative simplification. In contrast, C-SPAN provides what this study terms “archival transparency,” documenting government proceedings as a living historical record. Yet, this model faces existential challenges in a fragmented digital landscape dominated by algorithmic curation, declining cable revenues, and shifting audience habits. Ultimately, the thesis argues that while C-SPAN cannot fully escape the ideological and economic constraints of the media system, its commitment to substance over spectacle remains a vital, if precarious, contribution to the pursuit of an informed and participatory democracy.