Divisions of labor: Why alternative news users seek out mainstream news media in Denmark and how they combine mainstream and alternative content

Introduction

Alternative news sites position themselves as correctives of the dominant mainstream news media (Holt et al., 2019) whose alleged biases they claim to counter (Figenschou and Ihlebæk 2019). Accordingly, prior studies show that their users have low(er) trust in mainstream news (e.g. Andersen et al., 2021; Schulze 2020) and suggest that they turn to alternative media in response to perceptions that mainstream media are politically biased, favor the economic and political elite, or even tell outright lies (e.g. Noppari et al., 2019; Schwarzenegger 2023). Previously, low(er) trust in mainstream media was assumed to make people turn away from them (Tsfati and Capella 2003). However, recent studies have established that alternative media users do not inhabit so-called echo chambers but use a mix of alternative and mainstream news (e.g. Andersen et al., 2021; Brems 2024; Müller and Schulz 2021).

This apparent paradox begs the question why alternative news users seek out mainstream media if they consider them biased (Brems 2024) and what they gain from using them if they do not trust them (Andersen et al., 2021). A central concern is that exposure to mainstream news makes no difference if the users disregard it as ‘fake news’ and end up basing their opinion formation and political actions solely on one-sided information from alternative media (Strömbäck 2023). Such questions and concerns reflect growing acknowledgement that assessing the implications of citizens turning to alternative news sources requires switching focus from what news people are exposed to, to why and how they engage with those sources of news (ibid; Bruns 2019). A burgeoning body of work has already provided valuable insights into different motivations for and ways of using alternative media (e.g. Noppari et al., 2019; Schwarzenegger 2023; Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou 2022). The present study adds novel insights to this literature by exploring why alternative news users use mainstream media (RQ1) and how they combine alternative and mainstream content (RQ2).

The study is based on qualitative interviews with 25 users of Danish alternative media. Drawing on the news (or media) repertoires approach (Hasebrink and Domeyer 2012), it explores how the users’ engagement with mainstream media can be understood as the result of intentional use to fulfil different needs but also of everyday habits and unwanted incidental exposure. Furthermore, it identifies two distinct roles alternative media and mainstream media can play relative to each other in the users’ news repertoires: Some account for a clear division of labor where mainstream media take care of broad coverage of current affairs and provide parts of the picture on news topics the users consider biased, and alternative media act as counterbalance by providing the missing pieces. Others account for a less clear division of labor where mainstream and alternative media play overlapping roles, leaving the latter as a peripheral supplement. These findings indicate little risk that alternative media might displace their mainstream counterparts. However, due to the relatively small sample and limitations to the recruitment procedure (see below), the findings should not be read as representative of all Danish users. Furthermore, the findings must be understood in relation to the specific Danish case. The article concludes by discussing their relevance in dissimilar media contexts.

Defining alternative media: From champions to challengers of democracy

Alternative media is a much-debated term. Traditionally, it was associated with participatory grassroots initiatives like ethnic minority media, women rights magazines, and activist movements’ media (Coleman and Ross 2010; Rauch 2007) that sought to challenge mainstream (mass) media hegemony and give voice to marginalized groups (Atton 2015). Within the last decade, however, the term has increasingly been used to denote online news sites that leverage a self-proclaimed outsider-position at the political margins of society to question the legitimacy of mainstream media based on assertions of ideological biases, political correctness, and elitism (e.g. Figenschou and Ihlebæk 2019). The present study aligns with this conception of the term. While they are a heterogenous group (Heft et al., 2020), the content of both left-wing and right-wing alternative media is often characterized by populist rhetoric, attacks on mainstream media, and (extreme) partisanship (e.g. Brems 2023b; Freudenthaler and Wessler 2021; Mayerhöffer 2021). In this context, mainstream media have come to be seen less as a hegemonic behemoth in need of challenge and more as a stronghold against biased or misleading information; and alternative media and the use of them recast as a threat, rather than an asset, to democracy (Holt 2020).

Studying alternative media use as news use

To explore why alternative media users seek out mainstream media and how they combine these different types of content, the study draws on the notion of news repertoires, referring to the cross-media constellation of news sources or “news-like items” (Vulpius et al., 2023: 80) people regularly engage with. This perspective offers a holistic (Swart et al., 2017) and relational (Hasebrink and Domeyer 2012) approach to news use, which means that news repertoires must be considered in their entirety and the use of any specific news source understood through its relation to other news sources in the news repertoire (ibid.). This makes the news repertoire perspective well-suited for investigating how the users combine alternative and mainstream media.

Similar to uses and gratifications theory, which posits that users rationally choose news media to fulfill certain needs (e.g. Ruggiero 2000), the news repertoires perspective assumes that people combine different sources of news to “structure their everyday life and fulfill their needs for information, entertainment, opinion formation, sociability, and engagement” (Swart et al., 2017: 1345). Furthermore, users may engage with certain news sources because they enable them to participate in social networks and uphold their public connection to political life (Couldry et al., 2007; Moe and Ytre-Arne 2022; Schrøder and Larsen 2010). From this perspective, it can be assumed that alternative media users seek out these and mainstream media because they fulfil specific needs; otherwise, they would hold no place in their news repertoires.

The news repertoires perspective thus emphasizes how people actively shape their own news diets by selecting among the available options, a role that has become increasingly important with the transition to a high-choice news environment (Strömbäck et al., 2018). However, it also stresses that news use is shaped by habits and everyday routines (e.g. Moe and Ytre-Arne 2022). Furthermore, recent years’ research into digital news use highlights that information flows are not only shaped by intentional choices but also by social and algorithmic curation (Thorson and Wells 2016). People may incidentally stumble across news when they are online for other reasons (Schäfer 2023), for example in their social media feeds, whether because it has been shared by their connections or prioritized by the platform algorithm. From these perspectives, the use of alternative and mainstream media should not necessarily be understood as a rational choice motivated by certain needs but may also be incidental or interwoven with everyday habits.

Explanations of alternative media use

It is only recently that academic scholarship has taken up investigation of the users of alternative media (Schwarzenegger 2023). Part of this literature has focused on exploring motivations for and ways of engaging with alternative media and showed that they can be very diverse. On the most critical end of the spectrum, some seek out alternative media in response to perceptions that their political views are not reflected in mainstream media, which serve as tools of the economic and political elites (Noppari et al., 2019; Schwarzenegger 2023). Such users claim to have turned their back on mainstream media or follow them to monitor alleged lies (ibid). More moderately, others use alternative media for different angles on topics they consider biased (Noppari et al., 2019), to challenge and fill gaps in mainstream news coverage (Schwarzenegger 2023; Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou 2022), and as a complementary perspective (Schwarzenegger 2023). One study found that such users explained their use of mainstream news with difficulty finding alternative sources (Noppari et al., 2019). Additionally, alternative news use can be motivated by curiosity, interest in political thinking, and entertainment (Noppari et al., 2019), a sense of belonging to a community (dis)believing the same things, or monitoring the other political side by following alternative media with opposite stances (Schwarzenegger 2023).

Other studies have shed light on how alternative media spread on social media. Studies from the U.S., Norway, and Sweden show that content from alternative media is amplified on social media, which may help them reach an audience beyond their core users (Hiaeshutter-Rice and Weeks 2021; Larsson 2019; Sandberg and Ihlebæk 2019). Supporting this, social media use is associated with alternative news use across countries (Müller and Schulz 2021; Schulze 2020). Another study explored how Norwegian immigration-critics actively curate right-wing information flows on social media, among other things by following right-wing alternative media and connecting with likeminded peers (Figenschou and Thorbjørnsrud 2023). Existing studies thus suggest that alternative media use can be understood as the result of active choices rooted in different motivations but also as shaped by social networks and algorithmic curation.

Finally, while some users claim to have abandoned mainstream media entirely, as noted above, survey studies have established that the users generally do not rely solely on alternative media but also use mainstream media (e.g., Andersen et al., 2021; Brems 2024; Müller and Schulz 2021). Although the findings from the interview-studies reviewed above do give some indications of how the users engage with mainstream media, we still have only limited knowledge of why users seek out mainstream media if they consider them biased and how they combine alternative and mainstream content. A U.S. study found that activist users of alternative media downplayed their use of mainstream news, but some explained reading them with an ironic distance or to keep track of headlines (Rauch 2007). Work focusing on populist citizens and news skeptics have proposed need for orientation, habits, desire for counterarguing, or seeking confirmation that mainstream media are biased as possible explanations for their mainstream news use (Schulz 2019; Tsfati and Capella 2005). However, this remains to be investigated. It is against this backdrop that the present study presents an in-depth exploration of why alternative media users also use mainstream media and what roles alternative and mainstream media play relative to each other in the users’ news repertoires.

The Danish context

The Danish media context is characterized by high professionalization (Hallin and Mancini 2004) and a strong public service tradition that ensures access to neutral news content (Albæk et al., 2015) and enjoys widespread support from the population (Newman et al., 2023). Trust in mainstream news is generally high (ibid.), although with larger shares of the population identifying as left-wing or right-wing saying news media treat their opinions unfairly (Schrøder et al., 2021). These traits set Denmark apart from the U.S. media context, characterized by a weak public service tradition (Steppat et al., 2023) and generally low trust in mainstream news (Newman et al., 2023). While Danish quality newspapers are not biased in favor of specific parties (Albæk et al., 2015), their ideological leanings are reflected in especially their opinion content (e.g. Hjarvard 2010) and mainstream public debate is considered inclusive of controversial opinions, especially immigration-critical viewpoints (Heft et al., 2020). This sets Denmark apart from neighboring countries Sweden and Germany where immigration-critical viewpoints have traditionally been ostracized (ibid).

These characteristics provide less fertile ground for alternative media to thrive and measured by supply, the Danish media ecology is less developed than in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden (Heft et al., 2020). This is also reflected in findings that Danish alternative media cover a narrower scope of topics than mainstream media (Brems 2023a; Mayerhöffer 2021) and display a much higher reliance on reuse of mainstream news content than U.S. alternative media (Mayerhöffer and Heft 2021). While some studies suggest that the demand for alternative news is also smaller in Denmark than in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden (Heft et al., 2020; Newman et al., 2018), other studies indicate that approximately a fifth or a sixth of the population use alternative media (Brems 2024; Steppat et al., 2023). The final section of the article discusses what the Danish context means for the interpretation of the findings and their relevance for dissimilar media contexts as those described.

Data and methods

The present study focuses on users of 12 Danish alternative media, selected based on previous studies (Blach-Ørsten and Mayerhöffer 2021; Brems 2023b). Three are left-wing (Konfront, Netavisen Pio, Solidaritet) and nine right-wing (180Grader, 24NYT, Den Korte Avis, ditOverblik, Document, Folkets Avis, Indblik, Kontrast, and NewSpeek), reflecting greater supply of the latter. All position themselves as correctives of mainstream media but their degree of political extremity and prevalence and severity of mainstream media criticism varies (Brems 2023b).

Alternative media users can be difficult to access (Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou 2022) why three different sampling strategies were combined. Facebook is a key gateway to Danish alternative news sites (Blach-Ørsten and Mayerhöffer 2021). Therefore, the first recruitment step involved manually downloading profile links to all Facebook users who had reacted (‘liking’/‘loving’/‘laughing’/etc.) to posts from a subset of five of the 12 alternative media (two left-wing; three right-wing, representing different degrees of extremity) during the last 3-7 days. 155 of these profiles/users were randomly selected and contacted via direct Facebook message of whom 11 agreed to participate. Second, all 12 alternative media were asked to share (or let the author share) a request for interviewees via their webpages or Facebook-pages, which five of them did. This resulted in 13 participants and allowed recruiting users who did not use Facebook. Third, one participant was recruited via the author’s network’s network, resulting in a total of 25 interviewees.

Users of all 12 alternative media are represented in the sample, the interviewees came from all five Danish regions, one in three were women, and level of education ranged from lower secondary to MA degree or higher. While diverse in these respects, interviewees aged 50+ were overrepresented. This aligns with Danish alternative media users being older (Brems 2024) but means that the findings presented might better reflect user practices of older alternative media users. Furthermore, the sample is relatively small, and the recruitment procedure was partly based on self-selection and likely attracted more active users who engage with alternative news on social media or visit their webpages directly. This means the findings might not capture user practices of less dedicated users. The findings should be read with these reservations and not be understood as representative of all Danish alternative news users.

The interviews form part of a larger project on alternative news use in Denmark. The findings presented are based on the parts of the interviews that focused on motivations for and ways of using alternative and mainstream media. Each interview began by mapping the interviewees’ news repertoires. This facilitated talk about why they used the specific news sources, how often, what they read about, what made them click articles, etc., comparable to think-aloud protocols (Hasebrink and Domeyer 2012). Later, the interviewees were asked to place the news sources they used in concentric circles representing most, less, and least important (Merten 2020). Two examples hereof are displayed in Figure 1. This provided insight into how the users themselves perceive the structure of their news repertoires and the relationships between the news outlets in them.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Examples of news repertoire mappings.

The mappings revealed that the interviewed users structured their news repertoires in three different ways: Mainstream media most important (placed at least one mainstream and no alternative media among most important news sources, n = 6); alternative and mainstream media equally important (placed at least one alternative and one mainstream medium among most important news sources, n = 13); and alternative media most important (placed at least one alternative and no mainstream media among most important news sources, n = 5). ¹ This distinction is used in the analysis of what roles alternative and mainstream media play in the users’ news repertoires presented below. However, the latter two groups will be analyzed together because the analysis identified no substantial differences between them. Users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media were found in all groups and the patterns identified should thus be understood as cutting across users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media unless otherwise stated.

All interviews were conducted by the author in 2021 between two COVID-19 lock-downs (19 face-to-face, six via phone/video-call), most lasted 60-90 minutes. They were carried out in accordance with principles of informed consent and GDPR regulations. To respect their anonymity, the interviewees are referred to by a number in the analysis. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by the author using a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to thematic coding (Brems and Arregui Olivera 2024). For interview-guide and analytic codes, see Appendix A.

Findings

Conclusion and discussion

It is well-established that alternative media users have low(er) trust in mainstream media (e.g. Andersen et al., 2021; Schulze 2020) but recent studies show that they nonetheless use them (e.g. Brems 2024; Müller and Schulz 2021). Departing from this paradox, this study investigated why alternative media users seek out mainstream media (RQ1) and how they combine alternative and mainstream content (RQ2). The findings suggest that the users intentionally seek out mainstream news to fulfil certain needs, especially for general orientation but also opinion confirmation, social connection, and entertainment. Alternative media users’ motivations for mainstream news use are thus not that different from those identified among news users more generally (e.g. Couldry et al., 2007; Moe and Ytre-Arne 2022; Swart et al., 2017). However, the findings also show that some may use mainstream news to keep connected to public debate but with hostile motives of countering it. While less prevalent in the data, the users’ engagement with mainstream media must also be understood as the result of everyday habits that are not easily changed (Swart et al., 2017) or unwanted incidental exposure (Schäfer 2023) due to the ubiquity of mainstream news.

Further adding to our understanding, findings showed that some users exempt specific mainstream media and content from criticism and that users mainly consider coverage of specific news topics biased (see also Noppari et al., 2019; Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou 2022). Thus, another reason why the users rely on mainstream media might be that their low(er) media trust is not all-encompassing. This could be pursued in future studies by investigating alternative media users’ trust in mainstream news at the brand-specific and topic-specific levels (Strömbäck et al., 2020).

In response to RQ2, the study identified two distinct ways of combining alternative and mainstream media, which can be understood as more and less clear divisions of labor between the two types of media. Some users account for a clear division where mainstream media provide news on a broad scope of topics as well as one side of the story and parts of the picture on a narrower scope of topics that the users consider particularly biased in mainstream news coverage. Alternative media provide the other side of the story and the missing pieces but, notably, never stand alone because their counterbalancing act only makes sense for the users in combination with mainstream media. Other users account for a less clear division where the roles of alternative and mainstream (and niche) media partly overlap. A notable finding is that this seemingly results in alternative media being less important to these users, not in them overtaking the role of mainstream media. In sum, the findings suggest that although the users consider mainstream media biased, they can be relevant sources of information for the users, and indicate limited risk that alternative media could entirely displace mainstream media in the users’ news repertoires.

However, these findings must be understood vis-a-vis the specific Danish media context. First, when users of alternative media rely on mainstream news for general orientation, it must be viewed in relation to the strong Danish public service tradition that ensures neutral content (Albæk et al., 2015) and the generally high trust in mainstream news (Newman et al., 2023). Second, the finding that some users seek out mainstream newspapers because they feel their views are represented in the opinion content must be viewed in light of the relative openness to extreme points of view in Danish public debate (Heft et al., 2020). Third, the less-developed Danish alternative media ecology (Heft et al., 2020) arguably sets certain limits for how central a role alternative media can play in the users’ news repertoires: Because of the topically narrow coverage offered by alternative media (Brems 2023a; Mayerhöffer 2021), the users must turn to mainstream news if they want information on a broad spectrum of current affairs.

This means that the findings presented may be particular to the Danish case or cases with similar characteristics. In media contexts like those found in neighboring countries Germany and Sweden where public debate has been less tolerant of extreme (immigration-critical) points of view (Heft et al., 2020), it may be less likely that (especially right-wing) alternative media users would find their views represented on mainstream newspapers’ opinion pages. In more stark contrast, alternative media users may be less inclined to rely on mainstream news for general orientation in contexts like the U.S. where the public service tradition is weak (Steppat et al., 2023) and trust in mainstream news is low and polarized along partisan lines (Newman et al., 2018). Here, hostile motivations for using mainstream news (either centrist or with the opposite political leaning) may be more dominant. Furthermore, a well-developed alternative media ecology like the one found in the U.S. (Heft et al., 2020) makes it easier to follow a broad scope of news topics while relying only on alternative media. In such situations, other divisions of labor might be found where alternative media to a larger extent overtake mainstream media’s informational role.

Speaking against this latter point, however, a recent study suggests that in a polarized media-political context like the U.S., news users more frequently name news sources traditionally considered mainstream as ‘alternative sources of information’ (Steppat et al., 2023). As such, it is also possible that alternative media would play a less prominent role in users’ news repertoires in such contexts because partisan mainstream outlets like Fox News and MSNBC might fulfil some of the same needs as alternative media do for users in Denmark. Furthermore, it should be acknowledged that the findings from the present study show that the uses express an omnivorous interest in news and explicit desire for exposure to multiple perspectives. If taken at face value, this would indicate that even in a context where alternative media covered a broader scope of topics, their users would not necessarily abandon exposure to diverse mainstream news altogether in favor of attitude-consistent coverage.

The considerations outlined here point to the limitation of relying on single-country case studies and show the relevance of future comparative studies to explore whether motivations for using and ways of combining alternative and mainstream media differ across media contexts. The present study also has the limitation that it does not allow for exploring whether the roles alternative and mainstream media play in users’ news repertoires are stable or subject to change over time. Speaking to the relevance of investigating this, two interviewees who considered alternative media more important than mainstream media accounted for a gradual loss of interest in mainstream news, suggesting that alternative media use might, in some cases, diminish the perceived importance of mainstream news over time. Future studies could investigate this by following the same users for a longer period.

Another limitation is that the study does not provide insight into how the users decide what to believe when engaging with conflicting evidence from alternative and mainstream media. While they claim to consider perspectives from both, it is possible that they consequently align with alternative media. This would effectively result in opinion formation based on the one-sided perspectives of alternative media after all (Strömbäck 2023) and call into question the value of their exposure to mainstream news. This is an important question to investigate in future studies, for example through experimental designs. Finally, it should be reiterated that the study builds on interviews with a relatively small sample and although efforts were made to include perspectives from a diverse range of alternative media users, the sampling strategies employed possibly captured more active users. Therefore, the findings might better reflect user patterns of more engaged users and should not be read as representative of all Danish alternative media users.

Despite these limitations, the study contributes new insights into why alternative news users seek out mainstream media, despite thinking them biased, and different ways of combining alternative and mainstream content. Altogether, the findings suggest that mainstream media, in different ways, constitute a central part of alternative news users’ political and social connection that cannot easily be overtaken by alternative media, at least not in the case of Denmark. Furthermore, the study offers the general insight that the interplay between alternative and mainstream media must be understood as shaped both by the specific media context in which they are used and by the users who can actively combine them in different ways, even within the same media context.

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