Between Mainstream and Alternative – Co-orientation in Right-Wing Populist Alternative News Media

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-167
Author(s):  
Lena Frischlich ◽  
Johanna Klapproth ◽  
Felix Brinkschulte
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Right Wing

Tabloid news, anti-immigration attitudes, and support for right-wing populist parties

2019 ◽  
pp. 205704731988412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Diehl ◽  
Ramona Vonbun-Feldbauer ◽  
Matthew Barnidge
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
News Media ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Immigration Attitudes

This study examines the role of individuals’ media diets in contributing to the growing support for right-wing populist parties. Drawing on social identity theory and the notion of populism as political communication, this study argues that socio-economic status and tabloid news use explain support for right-wing candidates through heightened out-group hostility. Using survey data from the Austrian National Election Study ( N = 1161), we present a process model in the structural equation modeling framework, and we compare the direct and indirect effects of attention to tabloid versus broadsheet news on the probability to vote for the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs. Results show that the link between social status and support for right-wing populism is mediated by attention to tabloid news and anti-immigration attitudes. Implications for democratic norms are discussed in light of the overlap between news media and politicians in their use of populist narratives.

scholarly journals Digital Media and the Entrenchment of Right-Wing Populist Agendas

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511988532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Manipulation ◽  
Political Divide

Since Brexit and the election of President Donald Trump, news media around the world have given extensive coverage to the issue of disinformation and polarization. This article argues that while the negative effects of social media have dominated the discussion, these effects do not address how right-wing populists have been able to successfully and legitimately use digital media to circumvent traditional media. The article uses the United States and Sweden as case studies about how digital media have helped to achieve electoral success and shift the political direction in both countries—though in quite different ways. It also argues that the sources of right-wing populism go beyond the hitherto dominant left–right political divide, capturing anti-elite sentiment, and promoting exclusionary nationalism. The dominance of the issue of media manipulation has obscured the shift whereby the relation between the media and politics has become more fluid and antagonistic, which fits the populist agenda. This shift requires a rethinking of political communication that includes both the social forces that give rise to populism and the alternative digital channels that entrench them, with implications for the prospects of the role of media in politics in the two countries and beyond.

scholarly journals The “replication crisis” in the public eye: Germans’ awareness and perceptions of the (ir)reproducibility of scientific research

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Göran Mede ◽  
Mike S. Schäfer ◽  
Ricarda Ziegler ◽  
Markus Weißkopf
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
News Media ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Scientific Quality ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
German Science ◽  
Replication Crisis ◽  
Nationally Representative

Several meta-analytical attempts to reproduce results of empirical research have failed in recent years, prompting scholars and news media to diagnose a “replication crisis” and voice concerns about science losing public credibility. Others, in contrast, hoped replication efforts could improve public confidence in science. Yet nationally representative evidence backing these concerns or hopes is scarce. We provide such evidence, conducting a secondary analysis of the German “Science Barometer” (“Wissenschaftsbarometer”) survey. We find that most Germans are not aware of the “replication crisis.” In addition, most interpret replication efforts as indicative of scientific quality control and science’s self-correcting nature. However, supporters of the populist right-wing party AfD tend to believe that the “crisis” shows one cannot trust science, perhaps using it as an argument to discredit science. But for the majority of Germans, hopes about reputational benefits of the “replication crisis” for science seem more justified than concerns about detrimental effects.

Online news media and propaganda influence on radicalized individuals: Findings from interviews with Islamist prisoners and former Islamists

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1437-1461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Baugut ◽  
Katharina Neumann
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Willingness To Use ◽  
War Victims ◽  
Western Politics ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Commit Suicide

This study is the first to explore the twin influences of online propaganda and news media on Islamists. We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with cognitively and behaviorally radicalized Islamist prisoners in Austria as well as former Islamists in Germany and Austria. We found that online propaganda and news media had interdependent influences on Islamists’ rejections of non-Muslims and Western politics, as well as on their willingness to use violence and commit suicide. Cognitively radicalized individuals were influenced by propaganda that blamed non-Muslims for opposing Islam; this was reinforced by online mainstream news reports of right-wing populism and extremism that propagandists selectively distributed via social media. Among behaviorally radicalized individuals, exposure to propaganda and news reports depicting Muslim war victims contributed to the radicalized individuals’ willingness to use violence. Moreover, propaganda and media reports that extensively personalized perpetrators of violence strengthened radicalized individuals’ motivations to imitate the use of violence.

Agendamelding and out-group derogation

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-144
Author(s):  
Jeffrey K. Riley ◽  
Holly S. Cowart
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Group Formation ◽  
News Article ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
The Media

Abstract This study is a mixed-method quantitative and qualitative content analysis that examined the overlapping presence of agendamelding theory and in-group out-group formation on the social media platform Reddit. The study looked at the top 10 posts for one month (n = 310) on the pro-Donald Trump subreddit /r/The_Donald. The results show that media choice was used to prove membership to the in-group, often by derogating the media used by the out-group. Specific patterns emerged within the derogative language as well. Links to left-wing and neutral news media sites were often commented on and criticized, while the content of the linked news article was ignored or changed. Right-wing news media sites, which were used as news sources rather than commentary, were typically posted without changes, unlike neutral news media sites, which were often posted in a mocking manner. As agendamelding suggests, participants sought to avoid dissonance by posting media to fit within the community.

How right-wing populists instrumentalize news media: Deliberate provocations, scandalizing media coverage, and public awareness for the Alternative for Germany (AfD)

2022 ◽  
pp. 194016122110726
Author(s):  
Marcus Maurer ◽  
Pablo Jost ◽  
Marlene Schaaf ◽  
Michael Sülflow ◽  
Simon Kruschinski
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Output Analysis ◽  
Alternative Für Deutschland ◽  
Database Research ◽  
Alternative For Germany ◽  
Western Democracies

The rise of right-wing populist parties in Western democracies is often attributed to populists’ ability to instrumentalize news media by making deliberate provocations (e.g., verbal attacks on migrants or politicians from other parties) that generate media coverage and public awareness. To explain the success of populists’ deliberate provocations, we drew from research on populism and scandal theory to develop a theoretical framework that we tested in three studies examining the rise of German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between January 2015 and December 2018. In Study 1, an input–output analysis of 17 deliberate provocations by AfD politicians in German news media revealed much more coverage about their attacks on migrants than about their attacks on political elites, although all were covered in predominantly scandalizing ways. Next, Study 2, involving media database research and an analysis of Google Trends data, showed that the provocations had increased overall media coverage about the AfD and influenced public awareness of the party

Neo-Populist Scandal and Social Media

2020 ◽  
pp. 442-459
Author(s):  
Juha Herkman ◽  
Janne Matikainen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Political Scandals ◽  
The Relationship

The article analyses a political scandal that occurred in Finland in 2015, when an MP of the populist right-wing Finns Party, Olli Immonen, published a Facebook update in which he used the same kind of militant–nationalist rhetoric against multiculturalism that Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik had used a couple of years earlier. By analyzing the content published in both social and news media, the role of social media and the relationship between news reporting and social media are explored by analyzing the progress of the scandal. The analysis indicates the prominent role of social media as being a starting point for scandal and for keeping scandal in the public eye, serving as forums for supporters and opponents of the scandalized politician. The relationship between social and news media seems symbiotic in this case because both of them fed and inspired each other during the scandal. However, further research is needed to fully understand the role of social media in scandals linked to north and west European populist right-wing parties, as well as political scandals occurring in different political contexts and media environments.

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