Alternative News Media Research Articles

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

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.

British Muslims and the Rise of Ethnic Media in the Digital Age a Case Study of 5Pillars

For a long time now, the media representations of British Muslims, in particular, are the central focus of academic studies. Especially, the terror attacks often receive bias coverage that connects Islam as a faith to such incidents. Notably, the attack on the Manchester arena in May 2017 by an ISIS recruit by the name of Salman Abedi shocked the nation. In the aftermath of the crisis, UK and Western media dominated national and international press coverage. However, little attention was given and received in relation to the coverage provided by British Muslim media by 5Pillars. This article aims to provide a case study of the 5Pillars media coverage of the attack on the Manchester arena in May 2017. Also, it examines the increasing role and impact of ethnic media as a challenger to the mainstream media. Furthermore, it asks significant questions including: Can Muslim media ownership makes their representation better? And is the media really that powerful that it causes harm to the reputation of Muslims worldwide? It proposes to establish alternative news media platforms alongside the mainstream media that dominate news and often either misrepresents or underrepresents the British Muslims.

Far right alternative news media as ‘indignation mobilization mechanisms’: how the far right opposed the Global Compact for Migration

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the role of alternative far-right media in promoting and organizing mobilization against the Global Compact for Migration – the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement, prepared under the auspices of the United Nations, covering all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner. Exploring four European alternative far-right media: PI-News in Germany, Il Primato Nazionale in Italy, the UK localization of Breitbart, and the transnational Voice of Europe, we show that these media have gone beyond (dis)informing and have actively mobilized and channeled indignation through petitioning and protest organization. While most research on far-right media practices so far has focused either on social media interactions or exclusively on ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’, we analyse web based alternative news media as part of а far-right social movement that has successfully used progressive left-wing protests repertoires and tactics. We argue that alternative far-right news media act as ‘indignation mobilization mechanisms’ that not only fuel the indignation of the public by channeling the messages of far-right politicians but also channel bottom-up indignation through online campaigns, petitions, and offline street protests. This unabashedly biased and mobilization-oriented approach is what distinguishes far-right media from mainstream media and guarantees them a loyal and dedicated supporter base.

The Alarmed Citizen: Fear, Mistrust, and Alternative Media

ABSTRACT The democratic role and authority of the news media rest on a basic premise of trust delegation, whereby citizens confide in the news media to provide sufficiently relevant and accurate information. In a time of dwindling trust levels, increasing polarization, and an abundance of new media, this article asks what characterizes citizens’ relations with the media when the relation of trust breaks down. To illuminate broader tendencies of mistrust and disengagement, the article analyzes how citizens who see current immigration patterns as a major threat evaluate established and alternative news media, navigate the news landscape, and create personal and selective news repertoires. From an abductive methodological approach, 24 in-depth qualitative interviews were analyzed in continuous dialogue with theories on trust, public connection, and the democratic role of citizens to conceptualize the alarmed citizen, who’s public connection is characterized by alertness, fear, and low institutional trust; the active shifting between alternative media and established news media, and the construction of personal news repertoires and supportive networks.

News Media Performance Evaluated by National Audiences: How Media Environments and User Preferences Matter

Media fragmentation and polarization have contributed to blurring the lines between professional and non-professional journalism. Internationally, more fragmented-polarized media environments are often associated with the emergence of non-professional news providers, the weakening of journalistic standards, and the segmentation of audiences along ideological leanings. Furthermore, these environments are home to partisan and alternative news media outlets, some of which try to actively undermine the credibility of traditional mainstream media in their reporting. By following an audience-centric approach, this study investigates the consequences of more fragmented-polarized media environments and consumption habits on users’ perceptions of news media performance. We use online-survey data from five countries that differ in the extent of fragmentation and polarization in the media environment (CH = 1,859, DK = 2,667, IT = 2,121, PL = 2,536, US = 3,493). We find that perceptions of high news media performance are more likely to be expressed by citizens from less fragmented-polarized media environments. Positive perceptions of news media performance are also stronger among users of traditional media, and those who inform themselves in a more attitude-congruent manner. By contrast, citizens from more fragmented-polarized media environments and users of alternative news media tend to express less satisfaction with news media performance. Based on these results, we argue that perceptions of news media performance among news users are shaped by their individual media choices as well as by the composition of the news media environments that surrounds them.

Hybrids Before Nonprofits: Key Challenges, Institutional Logics, and Normative Rules of Behavior of News Media Dedicated to Social Welfare

This article proposes comparing nonprofit news organizations that prioritize social welfare goals with the hybrid organizational form that mixes the institutional logics of charities and business enterprises: the Social Enterprise. The institutional logic comprises organizing templates, patterns of actions and values. These Social News Enterprises (SNEs) are analyzed as hybrids mixing the institutional logics of commercial, public, and alternative news media. Financed by donations and the revenue from services, SNEs engage in public, investigative, and explanatory journalism. Normative behavioral principles of SNEs are used to compare the impact-based model of ProPublica with the growth-focused model of The Texas Tribune.

News: Mobiles, Mobilities and Their Meeting Points

As both news and audiences are increasingly mobile, this introduction calls for intensified research into mobility as a core characteristic of journalism. This special issue explores the intersection of news with mobility in production, distribution and consumption. News has become mobile in a material sense as it is accessed on portable devices; and in a professional sense of being cut adrift from the business models which sustained it, challenged by peripheral actors and alternative news media, and embracing new technologies, new relationships with the audience and new political challenges to its status quo. One task is to adapt research techniques usually applied to fixed phenomena – or at least applied with the intention of fixing them – to something fluid. This is not impossible. All mobilities need an infrastructure on which to move, offering fixed points in a fluid world. Mobility offers critical questions of power and dominance of who is mobile, how, and under what circumstances; in this way, mobility becomes embodied. And the paradigm calls for research into the mobility of journalism and its interaction with similarly fluid, related actualities: blogs, smartphones, audiences, economics, advertisers, government and technology. Each interacts with journalism to deliver diverse realities.

The battle for truth: How online newspaper commenters defend their censored expressions

The presence of hate speech in the commentary field of online newspapers is a pressing challenge for free speech policy. We have conducted interviews with 15 people whose comments were censored for posting comments of a racist, discriminatory or hateful nature. What characterizes their self-understanding and enemy images? We found that central to their motivation for writing such comments was an understanding of themselves as particularly knowledgeable people. They see themselves as people who fight for the revelation of the truth, in contrast to the lies spread by politicians and the media. Furthermore, they regard politicians and the media as corrupt elites that are leading our society into destruction by their naïve support of liberal migration policies. By linking up to alternative news media, these individuals support various forms of racialized conspiracy theories, but also a form of radical right-wing populism in their concern that politics should be acted out by people themselves. As such, our study adds to the literature on conspiracy theories in general and racialized conspiracy theories in particular, but also to the literature on online far-right activists. Our contribution lies both in the newness of focusing on the self-perceptions, but also in opening up for a modification of existing literature on the far right.

Colloquiality and stylistics of online alternative news media

Abstract The main line of the study is bound to the conditions, demonstrations and effects of colloquiality (colloquialization) parameter that has been applied in the current electronic media communication sphere. Colloquiality as a non-verbal, structural and compositional attribute of a piece of communication is primarily present in the open, semi- and non-official communication contacts with direct, immediate involvement of their participants. In traditional print journalism built on the verified principles of printedness/ writtenness, colloquiality occurs as a secondary, accompanying attribute of the media communication pieces. Regardless of the genre affiliation of the newspaper products, it helps perform their, e.g., documentary, persuasive, captivating, characterizing, relieving or aesthetic functions. Apart from the parameter of printedness, both mainstream and alternative (complementary) online media generally calculate upon the advanced options of the visual code systems. Thus, language-based online newspapers are easily supplemented with simultaneous, additional, or substitutional means and procedures of cinematographic origin, e.g., a surprising choice, dynamic edition, purpose-made superposition of the text, audio and video sequences being applied through hyperlinking, audiovisual effects, etc. Besides, accompanying dialogization and consequent de-officialization of online newspapers are changing conventional characteristics of the journalistic style. The expanding zone of colloquiality loosens the standards of codified language in written/printed communication. Boundaries between the varieties in the framework of language stratification are already easily penetrable. The material base and argument platform of the study consist of author texts published in the Slovak online alternative news media.

The Dynamics of Political Elections: A Big Data Analysis of Intermedia Framing Between Social Media and News Media

This article examines the news framing of the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election using a big data analysis approach. Analyses of intermedia framing of over 370,000 articles and comments are conducted including news published in over 30 Chinese press media, four prominent Chinese online press media, and posts published on three candidates’ Facebook pages within the election period. The study contributes to the literature by examining the rarely discussed role of intermedia news framing, especially the relationship between legacy print media, online alternative news media, and audience comments on candidates’ social network sites. The data analysis provides evidence that audiences’ comments on candidates’ Facebook pages influenced legacy news coverage and online alternative news coverage. However, this study suggests that legacy news media and comments on Facebook do not necessarily have a reciprocal relationship. The implication of the findings and limitations are discussed.

Key Dimensions of Alternative News Media

This article proposes a definition of alternative news media and suggests routes for further research. It complements and extends previous conceptualizations in research on alternative media and outlines an umbrella definition of this phenomenon aimed to inspire contemporary research and scholarly debate. Previous research has been guided by a “progressive” perspective as a form of resistance against “bourgeois” hegemonic discourse. Such normative evaluations have in turn limited how the phenomenon has been studied empirically, by limiting the scope of research so that important contemporary phenomena fall outside the theoretical map. Conceptualizing alternative news media in the present hybrid and polarized media environment, we first propose a non-normative, multilevel relational definition: Alternative news media position themselves as correctives of the mainstream news media, as expressed in editorial agendas or statements and/or are perceived as such by their audiences or third-parties. This counter-hegemonic alternativeness can emerge on the macro-level of societal function, the meso-level of organizations and/or the micro-level of news content and producers. Second, demonstrating why this umbrella definition is fruitful in the changing media environment characterized by boundary struggles, crisis in legacy news media and mushrooming of alternative news outlets, we highlight research gaps and propose future research.CONCEPT DEFINITION: Alternative News Media

Beyond Afro-Pessimism and -optimism? A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Africa by Alternative News Media

Regarding the representation of Africa in Western media, academic criticism often refers to the presence of Afro-pessimistic discourses, and more recently to a seemingly emerging Afro-optimistic discourse. However, a systematic study of Africa’s representation is still missing as most research only includes mainstream media, news genres and formats and thus cannot provide the basis for any generalisable conclusions. To address this, we explore the representation of Africa in MO* Magazine, a Belgian alternative news magazine that focuses on the Global South, including an extensive coverage of Africa. Applying critical discourse analysis, we examined all articles covering Africa in 2015 and 2016 in addition to in-depth interviews with editorial staff. The study investigates how MO* constructs its alternative identity in the context of African news coverage. We argue that a mere empirical focus on features and narratives generally attributed to mainstream media, such as the presence of Afro-pessimistic and -optimistic discourses, is not sufficient to reach conclusions about the alternative identity of a magazine. The alternative value of MO* is reflected in the overall focus on the Global South and its key issues, the geographic diversity, editorial approach, and context-richness of the articles.

Disinformation and social bot operations in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election

Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been coordinated by means of bots, social media accounts controlled by computer scripts that try to disguise themselves as legitimate human users. In this study, we describe one such operation that occurred in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election. We collected a massive Twitter dataset of nearly 17 million posts, posted between 27 April and 7 May 2017 (Election Day). We then set to study the MacronLeaks disinformation campaign: By leveraging a mix of machine learning and cognitive behavioral modeling techniques, we separated humans from bots, and then studied the activities of the two groups independently, as well as their interplay. We provide a characterization of both the bots and the users who engaged with them, and oppose it to those users who didn’t. Prior interests of disinformation adopters pinpoint to the reasons of scarce success of this campaign: the users who engaged with MacronLeaks are mostly foreigners with pre-existing interest in alt-right topics and alternative news media, rather than French users with diverse political views. Concluding, anomalous account usage patterns suggest the possible existence of a black market for reusable political disinformation bots.

Disinformation and Social Bot Operations in the Run Up to the 2017 French Presidential Election

Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been coordinated by means of bots, social media accounts controlled by computer scripts that try to disguise themselves as legitimate human users. In this study, we describe one such operation occurred in the run up to the 2017 French presidential election. We collected a massive Twitter dataset of nearly 17 million posts occurred between April 27 and May 7, 2017 (Election Day). We then set to study the MacronLeaks disinformation campaign: By leveraging a mix of machine learning and cognitive behavioral modeling techniques, we separated humans from bots, and then studied the activities of the two groups taken independently, as well as their interplay. We provide a characterization of both the bots and the users who engaged with them, and oppose it to those users who didn't. Prior interests of disinformation adopters pinpoint to the reasons of scarce success of this campaign: the users who engaged with MacronLeaks are mostly foreigners with preexisting interest in alt-right topics and alternative news media, rather than French users with diverse political views. Concluding, anomalous account usage patterns suggest the possible existence of a black-market for reusable political disinformation bots.

The Public Policy Pedagogy of Corporate and Alternative News Media

This paper argues for seeing in-depth news coverage of political, social, and economic issues as “public policy pedagogy.” To develop my argument, I draw on Nancy Fraser’s democratic theory, which attends to social differences and does not assume that unity is a starting point or an end goal of public dialogue. Alongside the formation of “subaltern counterpublics” (Fraser), alternative media outlets sometimes develop. There, members of alternative publics debate their interests and strategize about how to be heard in wider, mass-mediated public arenas. I address the normative implications of this non-unitary, multiple-publics model for news journalism, analyzing how current conventions in mainstream news journalism (e.g., “balance” defined as “airing two extremes”) can restrict public debate and impoverish the public policy pedagogy on offer. I illustrate my arguments with a case study of media coverage of the creation and implementation of a social justice curriculum in British Columbia, Canada.

Abnormal Justice

Abnormal Justice

A Historical Case Study of Alternative News Media and Labor Activism: The Dubuque Leader 1935–1939

Identifying Alternative Media in Media History This study contributes the historical dimension of the literature addressing alternative media in the United States through a close consideration of the Dubuque Leader's reorganization in the mid 1930s as a collectively owned and independently operated newspaper, the challenges the newspaper faced as an alternative medium, and its role in cultivating progressive social change in the city and region. A weekly newspaper controlled by a cooperative of several hundred working-class shareholders involved in or supportive of the labor union movement, the Leader became an important forum for Dubuque, Iowa's working-class community, while its editorial abandon made it a frequently controversial outlet. As the Leader established itself as a social conscience of the community, so did its journalistic voice foster action toward the increased civic and economic enfranchisement of Dubuque's craft and industrial workers. In comparison the circulation of other labor and progressive journals of the period published in larger metropolitan locales, the Leader's peak weekly circulation of 3,350 during the late 1930s1 was modest, yet close historical exploration of the paper's formative years reveals not only an unusual discursive element within the social microcosm of Dubuque proper, but also many of the facets which constituted Midwestern working-class culture and community in the 1930s. At the same time the Leader is illustrative of the constraints facing journalists that are still encountered by independent news media this day. In fact, the Dubuque Leader's formation as non-profit organ correspondingly informs a central problem encountered by news media and addressed by journalists and scholars throughout the twentieth century: a commercial modus operandi versus genuine editorial freedom.2 This fundamental problem driven much of the media criticism in the United States3 and is of marked concern at the present historical moment where a networked world spawned a multiplicity of alternative news outlets and what become a genuine movement toward media reform.4 As John Downing noted many years ago, the problem of media access not been endemic the United States, and his studies have thus been driven by one crucial question which informs the present work: What are the possibilities people have for constructing their own media, independently of capital, the state, the church, and other agencies of oppressive power?5 One means of significantly responding this question is through historical examples of alternative media that illustrate under what specific social and historical conditions such possibilities were realized in a pre-information based era.6 While historical instances of alternative, independent, or community-based news media are essential a greater understanding of media and the potential for democratic social movements, media scholars have largely overlooked the histories of working-class newspapers with small circulations and similar alternative media. Detailed documentation of the difficulties encountered by them, however, is rich in its implications for a greater comprehension of not just alternative media forms, but also of the media terrain in general.7 As Nick Couldry and James Curran observe, The process we call 'media' is the historic result of countless local battles over who the power represent the reality of others. Once such battles are won, they generally cease being remembered as battles.8 Chris Atton also notes how recent scholarship has had little say about the historical conditions under which [alternative] media enact their journalism.9 Media historians' neglect of these struggles over representation, according Jon Bekken, signifies a missed opportunity to grapple with such vital questions as press freedom (both political and economic) and the nature of the relationship between the media and the publics they serve. …

Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel (review)

Reviewed by: Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel Yariv Tsfati Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel, by Yoram Peri. Stanford University Press, 2004. 384 pp. $24.95. After being neglected for several decades, the central role played by news media in various aspects of Israeli social and political life has enjoyed some scholarly attention in recent years. The works of Caspi & Limor (1999), Wolfsfeld (2004), and others are now rounded out by yet another exploration, focusing on the contribution of the privatized and Americanized television system to Israeli politics during the 1990s. Yoram Peri's Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel will undoubtedly become an indispensable text for scholars and students of Israeli media and politics. Brilliantly written and jam-packed with anecdotes and examples, Peri's book provides an almost encyclopedic description of the development of Israeli mainstream and alternative news media, and of the various intersections between media and politics in Israel. Peri does more [End Page 201] than merely describe Israeli media and their political significance, however. He reviews a vast array of concepts and theories of media and politics, examines their validity in the Israeli context, and contemplates whether and how the Israeli case can contribute to general theorization and conceptualization concerning the relationship between media and politics. The book contains three main parts: The first reviews the development of what Peri calls Mediapolitik in Israel. He argues that Israeli politics have become totally dominated by media logic, at the expense of the old political structures that were guided by political institutions such as parties. In the third part of the book, Peri describes the fragmentation of Israeli society, consisting today of six tribes (immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Israeli Palestinians, Orthodox Jews, national religious Jews, the "northerners," and the "southerners"). He contemplates whether this segmentation process was driven by the flourishing of alternative media, owned and operated by members of the various minority groups and constantly challenging mainstream news. Contrary to Katz (1996), Peri argues that the multi-channel media ecology, with an ample niche for minority media, does not endanger the cohesiveness and integration of Israeli society, but rather creates a new kind of social cohesiveness and integration. The second part of the book contains the book's main thesis and provides, in my opinion, its most innovative and important contribution. Here, Peri focuses on intersections between media and politics during the 1990s, with a substantial emphasis on the case of Benjamin Netanyahu, a case that despite its fascinating qualities has not yet benefited from scholarly attention. Peri argues that Netanyahu's term as prime minister (1996–1999) can be classified as neo-populism, given that the characteristics of populism—discontent from mediating institutions such as bureaucracy and the parliament, a charismatic leader, an anti-intellectual and anti-elite protest orientation, and an ultra-national platform—were all present in Netanyahu's campaigning, and subsequently in his term as prime minister. Netanyahu attempted to bypass the old political institutions and build his "coalition of the deprived" by addressing the people directly, through television. Netanyahu emerges from the book as a politician placing an unprecedented stress on media considerations. He was the first Israeli politician to travel everywhere with a makeup kit (in case he happened to find himself in the vicinity of a television camera); he was the first to plan events according to TV programming schedules, and he was the first to expose his private life (including his extramarital affair) in public, on TV. Netanyahu imported constant campaigning to Israel, and with it introduced extreme negative political advertising, using repetitive messages delivered in short sound bytes. Netanyahu [End Page 202] began his workday as prime minister with a detailed, lengthy discussion with his close circle of media consultants. For Netanyahu, unlike former prime ministers, the basic conception was that "statesmanship—namely steering the affairs of state—means foremost setting the public agenda, and this is done through the media" (p. 203). The book offers a brilliant analysis—the first of its kind—of the messages entailed in Netanyahu as a symbol. The product "Bibi Netanyahu," Peri argues, is an attempt to present, in aggregate, the defining traits of "Israeliness." Its salient characteristic...