Citation2019) which have been presented as highly successful (Conte Citation2016) despite contrasting evidence that they have limited audience reach (Klawier, Prochazka, and Schweiger Citation2021 Fletcher, Newman, and Schulz Citation2020, 8). Research has considered the formation of “digital news infrastructures” (Heft et al. Most pertinent here, they are reliant on social media to disseminate content (Kalsnes and Larsson Citation2019 Haller and Holt Citation2019 Manthorpe Citation2018). They are frequently critical of the MSM (Cushion, McDowell-Naylor, and Thomas Citation2021 Figenschou and Ihlebæk Citation2019 Holt, Figenschou, and Frischlich Citation2019) and establishment politics (Holt Citation2018 Rae Citation2020). Indeed, within Eldridge’s ( Citation2018, 857–858) notion of “interloper” journalism, AOPM nonetheless perform similar “socio-informative functions, identities, and roles”. If alternative media sites operating on the fringes of journalism both confirm and challenge what we recognise as conventional news reporting (Carlson Citation2016), our study can provide some insight into how “alternative” media are distinctive from the mainstream. Above all, our sentiment analysis reveals how AOPM use Twitter to amplify partisanship, and their reluctance to engage directly with social media users. This in turn, enables us to make a contemporary intervention into debates surrounding editorial practices, how AOPM serve audiences and the wider democratic value of media.ĭrawing on 14,807 manually coded Tweets and an analytical model developed by Orellana-Rodriguez and Keane ( Citation2018) that provides a taxonomy of identifiable themes within news organisations’ use of Twitter, we find merit in the ways AOPM use Twitter, but also that there are conventions that might undermine public understandings of politics. We are contextualising “good” and “bad” as indicative of professional practices largely adhering to traditional understandings of the normative aims of journalism (“good”) or apparently contravening such aims (“bad”). Accordingly, this study breaks new ground in its analysis of how AOPM use Twitter, contrasting this with how legacy news brands use Twitter, and asking whether AOPM’s Twitter strategies exhibit traits consistent with “good” or “bad” journalism. Many such outlets rely on Twitter to share content and reach their audience. Indeed, we argue later that when using Twitter to disseminate their work, even the description of “alternative” might actually be challenged. While these traits, we argue, are fairly consistent throughout, there the similarities generally end. This label reflects, we feel, the alternative or “corrective” (Holt, Figenschou, and Frischlich Citation2019, 3) they claim to offer to MSM and the independent governance/ ownership models generally distinguishing them from legacy media brands often under the control of large corporations. Given the wide diversity within these outlets (McDowell-Naylor, Cushion, and Thomas Citation2021b) and their range of approaches, organisational structures and content focus, applying homogenising labels is problematic, and while recognising this fundamental imperfection, for expediency, we nonetheless describe a specific group of these new organisations as “alternative online political media” (hereafter “AOPM”). The labels used to define them variously highlight their mainly political (and often opinionated) content, their online shareability, the often “clickbait” headlines and political partisanship (see McDowell-Naylor, Thomas, and Cushion Citation2021a, 171 for summary). Lying on a continuum between “well-funded, digital-native start-ups” and the “lone individual able to blog or tweet or comment” (Carlson and Lewis Citation2020, 123) are a range of online news outlets noticeably different to mainstream media (MSM) or “legacy news”.
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