Book Review: Digital-Native News and the Remaking of Latin American Mainstream and Alternative Journalism, by Summer Harlow

Abstract

administration, they feared the invalidation and exclusion of their community by the next president (p. 60). So, Martin concludes it was only natural for them to look for a new icon to ensure their survival. Third, Martin unpacks this constituency’s passive acceptance of Trump. Martin says Christian evangelicals carried out a mantra of “give it to God but still vote as God would have you to.” Now that Trump was interwoven neatly into this constituency’s narrative, they could passively ignore his dissimilar faults and vote for him (p. 77). Particularly in Chapter 6, Martin exemplifies this passivism in how evangelicals overlooked the contradictions of faith presented by Trump’s sexual abuse allegations. From reviewing live digital video recordings, blogs, and social media posts of women pastors and evangelical leaders who were anti-Trump, Martin’s core argument emerges: that the hypocrisy of the narrative Trump has been written into is fallible and that women are the demographic to collapse this narrative. The most significant contribution of this book is that it opens the door for future studies to examine the breaks in consubstantial rhetoric of Christian groups who have written Trump out of their narratives. We have seen in the 2022 midterms evidence of Martin’s claims given that women turned the tide against the red wave by disrupting the evangelical narrative surrounding Trumpism for its ad verrecundiam hypocrisy. By integrating ourselves through digital rhetorical ethnography, rhetoricians can uncover passive hegemonic forces in a digitized, polarized political environment.