Before this blog post, I had not heard of any of these anti-war news sites. Which I found concerning because I lean in a pretty centrist and pacifist manner, yet algorithms in social media sites have still not recommended any articles, posts, or anything else associated with them. These sites are squarely independent media and clearly do not have the financial ability to advertise themselves. Neither advertisers nor parent companies that would purchase and run these sites would benefit from their anti-conflict stance. War and outrage generates clicks which generates advertising revenue which allows the news to grow as a company rather than as a platform that stands for anything aside from profit. When there is conflict it causes people to check back into these sites daily for updates, whether to keep updated on world events or to stay safe.
Despite having a similar, anti-war message, there is a clear deviation between the political beliefs in each site provided. That first website (https://www.antiwar.com) seemed to be centrist while the second one (https://www.theamericanconservative.com) leaned very republican. This dichotomy shows that there is a universal truth to anti-war and people on all sides of the political spectrum can fight for and want peace. No one wants to go fight in a war, but the mainstream media wouldn't have you believe that. When there is an enemy there is a reason for the consumer to consume more news so they can stay ahead of the other side and be able to argue their talking points. This gives the sites loyal customers because this is their news, the one that lets them know what they need to in order to be on the “right” side of the conflict. A good article I found delving deeper into all of this can be found here. I think that it is the job of the individual to continue sharing anti-war articles and doing what we can to stand up to the system and make our want for peace known.
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