Alternative media for a populist audience? Exploring political and media use predictors of exposure to Breitbart, Sputnik, and Co.

ABSTRACT

Alongside the recent rise of political populism, a new type of alternative media has established in past years that allegedly contribute to the distribution of the populist narrative. Using a large-scale quota survey of German Internet users (n = 1346) we investigate political and media use predictors of exposure to alternative media with an affinity to populism (AMP). Results reveal substantial differences between occasional and frequent AMP users. While both groups heavily use Twitter and Facebook for political information, occasional AMP users exhibit hardly any specific political convictions (except that they feel less personally deprived than non-users). Contrary to that, frequent AMP exposure is related to higher personal relative deprivation, stronger populist attitudes and a higher likelihood to vote for the right-wing populist party AfD. Against this background, frequent AMP use can be interpreted as partisan selective exposure whereas occasional AMP exposure might result from incidental contact via social media platforms. These findings are discussed regarding the role of alternative and social media in the recent populism wave.

KEYWORDS:

• Political information
• alternative media
• news
• populism
• users
• Germany

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Philipp Müller (PhD, LMU Munich, 2015) is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies, University of Mannheim, Germany. His research focuses on political communication & societal cohesion, perceptions & effects of news media, digital news consumption, media change & innovation, and quantitative methods.

Anne Schulz is a Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. She is interested in comparative research in the wider areas of political communication and journalism research. Her previous work has focused on populist communication, news media perceptions, and news consumption.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) as part of the research centre NCCR Democracy.