Annett Heft, head of the research group Digitalization and the Transnational Public Sphere at the Weizenbaum Institut for the Networked Society¹ and the Free University Berlin², together with co-authors Curd Knüpfer^2, Susanne Reinhardt^1,2 and Eva Mayerhöffer (Roskilde University), have been awarded The International Journal of Press/Politics Jay Blumler Best Article Award 2022 for their study “Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States”.

The article analyzes how alternative right-wing online news sites (RNS) are networked in the digital space, both nationally and transnationally, and form a transnational information ecology on the right. A particular focus is on identifying shared reference points of such a right-wing news ecology on a transnational level. For this purpose, the authors investigate hyperlink networks between RNS in six Western democracies: Austria, Germany, the US, Great Britain, Denmark, and Sweden. The study shows that RNS do establish alternative right-wing news ecologies within and across borders, albeit in country-specific patterns. The US is unique, as news sites there function as hubs for transnational connections from European RNS. Overall, it becomes evident that the digital news ecology on the right does not form an insulated, alternative sphere but rather a transnationally interconnected ecosystem that seeks to link up to legacy media and, thus, to the public sphere at large.

For more details, read the paper published in The International Journal of Press/Politics here:

Heft, A., Knüpfer, C., Reinhardt, S., & Mayerhöffer, E. (2021). Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(2), 484–504. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220963670