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New Publication – Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics

News from Feb 15, 2024

On February 11, 2024, the final version of the article titled "Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics," authored by Annett Heft (Freie Universität Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute), Tim Ramsland, and Eva Mayerhöffer (both Roskilde University), was published by Taylor & Francis.

The article investigates how right-wing alternative news media, in their pursuit of both journalistic legitimacy and partisan credibility, impact source and topical diversity as well as content balance. Analyzing a dataset of 1000 randomly chosen articles from 20 right-wing alternative online news sources spanning six countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden) during the period from March 2019 to February 2020 (pre-COVID-19), the findings reveal a broad coverage of topics across most outlets. Specifically, US and UK media exhibit a primary focus on politics and policy, while Scandinavian counterparts lean more towards societal issues and crime coverage. The overall landscape of right-wing alternative news content is characterized by a mix of partisan and non-partisan sources. Notably, pivotal partisan areas like politics and mass media tend to feature more right-wing sources. Evaluation patterns indicate a positive bias towards right-wing sources concerning these topics, with a corresponding negative assessment of left-wing sources. Additionally, there is a tendency for right-wing and non-right-wing sources to be presented in separate articles rather than engaging in direct confrontation.

The full paper is available as an open-access publication. The paper, “Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics” was published in the journal Journalism Studies and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2294362 

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