How do Danish Right-wing Alternative Media Position Themselves Against the Mainstream? Advancing the Study of Alternative Media Structure and Content

Abstract

ABSTRACT The global rise of hyper-partisan media, especially on the political right, has been receiving increasing scholarly attention in the past years. In contrast to discarding these media as mere producers of fake news, this paper studies them as a case of alternative news media and thus as a self-proclaimed corrective to a perceived media mainstream. By focusing on the case of Denmark, where the public debate generally has been described as very open, the paper sheds light on the alternative character of these media in an environment that does not shun radical voices and viewpoints. Based on a qualitative content analysis of the entire website and article content published by five right-wing alternative news media in April 2019, the paper shows that Danish right-wing alternative media resist normalization at the structural level, but appear only moderately antagonistic and anti-hegemonic at the level of article content.