https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3565-6977
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abstract
Alternative news media are largely independent players in the news environment, which allows them to publish more alternative, and possibly more radical, news content. Do they utilise their independence to display actors that are underrepresented in the mainstream news? And does it affect the actor diversity in their news coverage and the journalistic environment as a whole? This study scrutinises the differences in actor diversity and actor presentation in articles published by alternative and mainstream news media to gauge if alternative media are more one-sided and if they contribute to the external actor diversity of the news environment. We analyse a sample of news articles on migration and social affairs published by two mainstream media and four alternative outlets. Despite limited differences in article-level actor diversity between alternative and mainstream news media, our findings highlight that right-wing and left-wing alternative media exploit their editorial independence differently to highlight other actor categories. Left-wing alternative news media present more civil society actors, while right-wing alternative news outlets pay more attention to right-wing politicians and parties. Thus, alternative news media are not that different in terms of internal actor diversity, but they modestly advance the external actor diversity in the news environment.
Disclosure Statement
We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
1 Newsmonkey, another one of the most prominent alternative news outlets in Flanders in terms of general reach, was left out of the selection because of its focus on entertainment news and other news coverage that caters to teens and young adults.
2 SCEPTR changed their name to PAL NWS early February 2021. Throughout this manuscript, we will only reference to ‘SCEPTR’, because they bore that name at the time of our data collection.