A study of alternative media from the Global South/ non-Western perspective: Scrutinizing how “alternativeness” varies in Africa,Asia,Latin America,and the Middle East

Abstract

Academic scholarship on alternative media remains Western-centric, presenting the view that such media features counter-hegemonic content and contributes to social movements and active citizenship. This paper synthesizes the work of scholars from the Global South/ non-West for the first time, analyzing top-cited journal articles produced by authors from the regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East to discover, using the inductive approach, how “alternativeness” is conceived of and represented in the non-West. This stands out from research that theorizes alternative media deductively, from the top-down and often through the Western lens, or country-specific research that is highly contextualized. From observations of each region’s political regimes, ownership structures of mainstream media, driving forces behind its alternative media, the types of content it produces, and its overall impact on society, this study identifies where alternative media in different non-Western regions may differ from how it is typically conceived of in the West, and introduces a five-factor framework that accounts for such variations in “alternativeness”, namely relating to (1) the nature of the mainstream media, (2) the nature of the political system, (3) who is producing the alternative media, (4) how the alternative media is produced, and (5) the goal or purpose of the alternative media. Ultimately, this paper offers a unique comparative view of alternative media systems from the non-Western perspective that scrutinizes the concept of “alternativeness” and how it is derived.

Keywords

alternative media mainstream media non-West Global South Africa Asia Latin America Middle East

Introduction

A majority of articles about alternative media in academic scholarship is Western-centric. This presents issues on multiple fronts – evaluating journalism through Western lenses may result in erroneous perceptions that alternative systems are deficient or lacking (Wang, 2010), and less representation of non-Western journalism realities also reduces understanding of their functioning and obscures situations that might be happening on the ground that the international community should be attentive to. According to a review of the academic database Scopus conducted by the authors at the start of this study, of the English-language articles pertaining to alternative media found within communication science across an 18-year period from 2004 onwards, a high 78.9% of the 1273 academic articles were written by Western-affiliated scholars from mainly North America and Europe.

The affiliations of these scholars subsequently impact their work and understanding of alternative media. They tend to define such media as counter-hegemonic to the mainstream, contributors to social movements and public debate on issues, and capable of enhancing democracy (Downing, 2001; Harcup, 2011). This presents a notable gap in research, where representations of alternative media by scholars in the Global South/ non-West are much fewer in comparison. Where they do exist, they have tended to focus on alternative media in specific countries (Lee et al., 2015; Makinen and Kuira, 2008; Perez-Arredondo, 2019); no study has yet synthesized this content to discover how “alternativeness” may look different across regions in a comparative analysis.

Indeed, how “alternativeness” is defined and the extent to which the media is and can be “alternative” are specific to country and region (Wu, 2021a: 15). Journalism realities in the non-West may operate outside the liberal-democratic ideological framework, where “undemocratic political regimes and restricted press freedom” may hinder the creation of a watchdog press (Márquez-Ramírez et al., 2020: 69). Where the press establishes partnerships with the government and aligns itself with its goals, even alternative media might have to tread carefully and remain “quite mainstream”, with the knowledge that the government consistently monitors what gets published in the news (Wu, 2021a: 8).

In their development of a framework that defined the key dimensions of alternative media in theoretical terms, Holt et al. (2019: 866) notably called for more “international comparative studies of alternative news media in different media systems” to help understand “general characteristics of alternative news media across contexts”. This paper does exactly that, reviewing how each region perceives its alternative media, the roles that it plays, and the reasons for its unique definitions of “alternativeness” as it is influenced by factors within its political, economic, social and cultural contexts. It does so through a systematic qualitative analysis of the top 10 most cited journal articles, obtained from the Scopus journal database over an 18-year period, about alternative media in the regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, penned by scholars from those regions.

Dominant definitions of “alternative media”: A social construct

To understand how alternative media is conceived of in Western-centric literature, it is first necessary to understand the media environments they are found within. Journalism tends to be viewed from a liberal-democratic ideological standpoint that is founded on the principles of “classical” liberalism (Hackett and Zhao, 1998: 146) – this perspective stresses respect for civil liberties and political rights, the creation of spaces for popular participation in decision-making and a more open and accountable government (Robinson and White, 1998: 19–21). It also stresses the need for “specialized organs” independent of the political field, such as the media, to protect the citizens from abuses of political power (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995: 13). Even while it is important to acknowledge that “the West” is not a homogeneous entity and press systems vary in different parts of Europe and North America, it is notable that the liberal strand of democracy did have its roots in the West, specifically during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, and later in America, during the 18th century (Wu, 2010), thereby leading to references of its liberal nature in journalism studies.

Not surprisingly then, Western-centric literature defines alternative media as being premised on “participatory communication and radicalized professional practices of journalism” (Atton, 2006: 574), standing apart from mainstream media as independent entities, and tending to be non-hierarchical, non-commercial, small-scale, focused on the community, and delivering content that may be critical of the status quo (Rauch, 2016). Such media is seen as crucial to democracies, presenting counter-hegemonic content not covered by the mainstream media because of the censorship the latter might face from the state and/or corporations (Downing, 2001).

Indeed, Holt et al. (2019: 860) define alternative media as those that “position themselves as correctives of the mainstream news media”. Alternative media may rise to play the role of critiquing mainstream media and professional journalism, highlighting their perceived bias and lack of objectivity (Cushion et al., 2021). That said, some may be hyperpartisan in nature and associated with radical groups from the liberal Left and conservative Right, generating concern about group polarization and the amplification of extremist ideas (Heft et al., 2020); this is a common view brought up in Western-centric research.

Additionally, alternative media can increase citizen participation. The Internet has enabled it to widen its distribution networks, allowing marginalized groups to articulate themselves on a large scale (Jackson and Welles, 2015), and creating networks of resistance that can contribute to the formation of a “counterpower” that “challenges the power embedded in the institutions of society” (Castells, 2012: 15).

There is reason however, to believe that the nature of “alternativeness” across different parts of the world may not be consistent with that depicted in Western-centric literature. Alternative media is “as much concerned with how it is organized within its socio-cultural context as with its subject matter” (Atton, 2002: 10). This necessitates the need to first understand the environment within which that media is found. Steppat et al. (2023) note that structural features found within political information environments impact the perceived alternativeness of the media.

This is coupled with the fact that journalism, as it is practiced in the real world, may differ greatly across countries, with “systemic actions, practices and interactions that define newswork and news processes” (Mujica and Bachmann, 2015: 316; Zelizer, 2004). Journalists work within a framework of news norms, values and routines that they are familiar with (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996), and news production processes, editorial decision-making, and management characteristics may also be standardized to suit the local context (Mujica and Bachmann, 2015). Indeed, as Mutsvairo et al. (2021) point out, “every culture of journalism is unique” (p. 997) and that much of the world’s population “[does] not get to live in established democracies with a functioning market economy and social welfare system” (p. 1000). Wu (2024) echoes the view that outside of the liberal West, journalists may be “working under a different set of conditions and/or constraints, beholden to different types of political and economic pressures” (p. 1053). They may also take on the character of the times, for instance, Chadha and Bhat (2022) note the rise of hyper-partisan outlets in India that have risen to challenge and “correct” the news presented by mainstream media that is supportive of the right-wing leadership of Narendra Modi (p. 1284), and Medeiros and Badr (2022) discuss how alternative media journalists in Brazil and Egypt strongly commit to political positions as they face constraints from their far-right governments. Contextual understanding is therefore crucial to adequately defining and evaluating the concept of alternativeness.

Methodology

Guiding this paper were these research questions:

RQ1: How is “alternativeness” defined in different regions of the non-West?

RQ2: What are the factors that influence that conception of “alternativeness”?

This paper used the method of systematic qualitative analysis to answer the questions above. This is a method used by scholars like Tandoc et al. (2018) and Tinmaz et al. (2022) to identify parameters of abstract concepts like “fake news” and “digital literacy” respectively.

To determine the sample to be examined, journal articles related to alternative media were obtained from the Scopus database using its API key, by searching for keywords that are core to the subject matter, namely “alternative media”, “alternative news media”, “alternative press”, “alternative news”, “alternative medium” and “alternative news medium”. The search was further restricted to journal articles written in English from the subject category “communication science”. Because some world regions did not have articles pertaining to that topic before 2004, to ensure comparability between regions, a decision was made to only keep articles published from 2004 to 2021, resulting in 1273 articles. The study’s analysis was then conducted in 2023.

To determine the articles for analysis, the corpus was arranged by regions of the non-West, based on author affiliations – this was deemed as the best way to segment the articles, given that examining them by the contents of their abstracts often yielded mentions of multiple countries at once, which made the categorization of the articles more challenging and inconsistent. Certain exclusion criteria were applied to then select the articles for analysis, a method used to shrink the sample down in meaningful ways (Tinmaz et al., 2022). Here, the decision was made to sort the articles by citation counts, with the top 10 most cited articles downloaded for analysis, since this would also indicate the impact that each article has had in the scholarly community. Whenever the contents of the paper did not correspond with the geographical affiliation of the author (e.g. a Latin American scholar might be based in Brazil but working on alternative media in the US), then the article would be skipped, and the next article with the right geographical location would be selected instead, resulting in the selection of 40 articles pertaining to the regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The papers were then read in their entirety and coded based on central themes that emerged, with the goal of understanding how alternative media is conceptualized in each region – by looking at descriptions of what they viewed as “alternative” – and the factors in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres that influenced their alternativeness. For instance, “alternative” in a region might be viewed as leaning left or right, and factors such as historical experiences in the political sphere, and philosophical traditions in the social and cultural spheres might be influencing factors. An inductive approach was used to identify such themes, where codes and categories were not predefined but were instead formed during the data analysis process, enabling concepts and conclusions to surface (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Findings

By analyzing the top-cited articles and the articles referenced within them from each of the regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, the following observations were made on how alternative media has been conceptualized and discussed in different regions in the non-West. It should be noted here that not all 40 articles in the top-cited list have been referenced here; only those that held substantive insights to the research questions of this paper have been mentioned. Additionally, where specific countries are mentioned, these reflect the countries actually studied by the authors of the top-cited articles. A table, presented later, contains information on which articles these are, and the key findings of this paper.

Africa

Top-cited articles about alternative media in the African region tended to focus on moments of political tension and strife, particularly during or after elections. This region is home to countries that feature dictatorships (Moyo, 2011) and highly regulated press systems controlled by their leaders through legal and extra-legal measures, such as the state ownership and control of news organizations (Moyo, 2009); this is unlike in the liberal West where freedom of the press is constitutionally protected. Consequently, there is low public trust in the state and widespread beliefs in the breakdown of the legal system and the credibility of elections (Moyo, 2011). Media bans may also be enacted “in the interest of public safety and tranquility” (Makinen and Kuira, 2008) when crises in politics occur. Much emphasis is placed on social media and the Internet as a means for the people to form a “parallel market of information” outside of that which is state-disseminated, participating in political discourse, often for purposes of political mobilization and advocacy (Moyo, 2009), with the ability to create “counter-hegemonic spaces” that can influence public opinion (Moyo, 2011). The Internet is seen to have “liberative potential” in contexts of “political repression”, given its easy entry and exit and ability for users to remain anonymous (Chibuwe and Ureke, 2016).

It is within this context that alternative media is spoken about – Makinen and Kuira (2008) examined the media ban and post-election crisis of Kenya in 2008 and the role of social media, websites and weblogs to enhance citizen communication and participatory journalism at that time; Moyo (2009) referred to how citizens utilized SMS and weblogs to exchange information during Zimbabwe’s 2008 election to generate widespread public opinion; and Moyo (2011) looked at how blogs were used to mediate citizen experiences during the violent election of Zimbabwe in 2008.

Mainstream media tends to be in the domain of the state in that region, with its content controlled by the government. In Zimbabwe for instance, laws do not permit the entrance of private players into the print or broadcast media sectors, and the collapsed economy has made the media unviable as a business (Moyo, 2009). Alternative media, therefore, occupies largely the online space, and plays the role of enabling “subaltern or anti-state discourses” to be articulated and circulated, speaking about the “harsh realities of Zimbabwean life and politics” (Moyo, 2011: 746), and forming counter-hegemonic public spheres where opinions could be formulated and sustained (Moyo, 2007). Hence “alternativeness” tends to form the articulation of a “different worldview and orders of reality” (Moyo, 2011: 749). Mopfu (2015: 82) speaks of alternative media on the Internet enabling the discussion of the 1980s genocide in Zimbabwe, for example, a topic that was “silenced by the ruling elite”. Similarly, in South Africa, alternative or independent media was responsible for much of the critical journalism during the apartheid period (Ndlovu, 2011; Wasserman and De Beer, 2005).

The extent to which this “alternativeness” has impact, however, should be noted; this impact may be limited due to two reasons. First, there are access disparities (Moyo, 2011). In Zimbabwe, for instance, the Internet reaches “only a small portion of the population” (Moyo, 2011). In Kenya, a majority of the population does not have Internet access either, described as “prohibitively expensive for the majority”, and many sites and weblogs are “managed by Kenyans living overseas and by foreigners residing in the country” (Makinen and Kuira, 2008: 332–333); this limits the demographics who might actually participate in and be impacted by alternative and citizen media, thereby limiting the extent of political mobilization and social change.

Second and relatedly, alternative and citizen media tend to be seen as “elitist” (Moyo, 2011), where the “middle class, educated and wealthy population” disseminates their views while the majority of the population may have limited participatory possibilities (Makinen and Kuira, 2008), including the working class and the rural population; this limits their ability to “conceptualize the alternative in truly radical ways” (Moyo, 2011: 758). This becomes a self-limiting aspect of “alternativeness” in the region – the middle class are “not revolutionaries seeking to uproot the political and economic status quo” but are rather “moral reformists who are concerned with the particular leadership style or the grammar of politics” (Moyo, 2011: 758). This conceptualization of “alternativeness”, defined by a select group in the population, thus makes it different from that presented in Western-centric research. It also challenges the Western conception of alternative media as being a key driver of potentially large-scale social change.

Asia

The top-cited articles on alternative media in Asia hailed from the regions of East and Southeast Asia; articles from South Asia had comparatively fewer citations. The Asian region is home to varied political systems where freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly may be constitutionally protected like in Taiwan and Hong Kong (Wu, 2022); where journalists may face constraints in reporting tied to government attitudes towards sensitive topics such as religion in India (Kumar, 2019) and the royal family in Thailand (McCargo, 2003); and/or where the press may be strictly controlled by an authoritarian style of governance, like in China, Singapore, and Malaysia (Wu, 2023).

Most cited studies in this region pertain to Hong Kong and Singapore, potentially due to their statuses as global cities in Asia; citations of the papers from Hong Kong were significantly higher than those from Singapore, given the greater freedom of the press there. In Hong Kong, the use of alternative media during the Umbrella Movement, a 79-day pro-democracy protest that took place in Hong Kong in 2014, has been most commonly cited. Alternative and social media were seen to be able to mobilize people to “participate in collective actions against political authorities and established institutions” (Lee et al., 2015: 359). Indeed, these media take on a political role, particularly when controversial issues of public relevance arise, generating increased political participation from the people and high-tension debates (Lee, 2015; Lee and Chan, 2016; Lee et al., 2015; Tang, 2015). This fuels the emergence of counterpublics that may use such media platforms to “interconnect, discuss issues, construct collective identity, articulate common goals, and engage in collection actions” because their freedom to express their opinions are stifled in the mainstream media (Lee et al., 2015: 360). The ability to share political information and connect to a variety of public actors has therefore enhanced democratic engagement there (Chan et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2016).

This comes amid citizen distrust towards the mainstream media in the face of increasing political control from the authoritarian Chinese central government, through efforts to control the press such as by co-opting media owners, building personal relationships with journalists, and setting up norms of political correctness (Leung and Lee, 2014); this control runs counter to the liberal press model upheld by news professionals in the city from the time of British colonization, when there was minimal government intervention in the press system and a critical press was able to develop (Wu, 2018). Due to rife media self-censorship under Chinese influence and erosion of press freedom, alternative media on the Internet has “become the sites where critical views can be freely expressed and the performance of mainstream media monitored and critiqued” (Leung and Lee, 2014: 345). This desire of alternative media to challenge power and socially mobilize reflects how alternative media is conceived of in the West. Media outlets such as the Hong Kong In-media and The House News have been pro-democracy alternative news websites with close ties to the social movement sector and offered critical commentaries that pushed for “progressive socio-political changes” (Leung and Lee, 2014: 345); these have however also faced stricter scrutiny and/or closure with the enactment of the territory’s National Security Law in 2020.

Top-cited articles about Singapore focus on alternative media taking on a different form compared to Hong Kong. Notably, the Singapore media operates under close government scrutiny, with Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew noting that “freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy and purpose of an elected government” (Chua, 1998: 151), as Singapore gained independence from the British in the 1960s and struggled as a port city with no natural resources, dwindling jobs, and a multiracial society prone to conflict (Wu, 2018). The traditional mainstream media in Singapore has been described as “largely compliant” and even while internet-based news sites are “less circumscribed by state influence”, they are “still subject to government scrutiny” (Duffy et al., 2018: 1135), with the same laws applying to content disseminated online as they would to traditional media like print and broadcast (Soon and Soh, 2014), and citizens and journalists viewing the government’s monitoring of the press as contributing to the economic and social benefits reaped by the country (Duffy et al., 2018; Wu, 2018).

This does not mean that alternative media sources in Singapore are always aligned with government agendas – alternative and social media have been used to raise awareness and garner support for certain causes (Tan, 2008). For instance, during elections, online alternative media was able to “force traditional media to revise their practices in order to appear more balanced and less biased”, resulting in greater coverage of opposition parties as they gained more publicity online – this has meant that mainstream media was “no longer the main agenda setters on election issues” (Zhang, 2016: 373). Impact of alternative media in the city-state has therefore led to richer public debate on issues and “online voices [have] succeeded in framing the issues with their own interpretations” (Zhang, 2016: 377). That said, it does not contribute to large-scale social movements and protests because of “legal barriers and the political apathy of citizens” (Zhang, 2016: 375), and there exists a culture of self-censorship among the populace to not rock the boat or ruffle feathers (Wu, 2021b). This makes the role of alternative media quite different from how it is conceived of in the liberal West. The authorities also tend to have greater reach and influence, even online, because of their ample resources, and are able to counter opposing views with much success (Zhang, 2016).

Latin America

Top-cited articles on alternative media in Latin America have noted the highly concentrated ownership of mainstream media in their countries and their respective political agendas. In Brazil, for instance, mainstream media has been described as “conservative” and “one of the most concentrated in the world” (Carvalho et al., 2020: 221; Moreira, 2016), taking sides against the political Left while “championing neoliberal policies as corresponding to the ‘national interest’” (Carvalho et al., 2020: 221).

In Chile, the mainstream media is also “heavily monopolized” (Pérez-Arredondo, 2019: 239) and has been described as “conservative” and “right-wing leaning”, with Copesa and Edwards Holdings owning, managing, and distributing almost 90% of the newspapers and their digital versions available to the population (Pérez-Arredondo, 2019: 240). Similarly in Paraguay, de Ancos et al. (2014) note that media there is concentrated in the hands of five business family groups and has the lowest rate of newspapers per capita in all of South America, with the media groups working as “promoters of the interests of the economic elites that own them, to the point of becoming pressure groups on the political power” (de Ancos et al., 2014: 231).

The political leanings of mainstream media in the region have been tied to some shared historical experiences. South American countries like Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, despite displaying very different political styles that practice varying extents of populism and socialism (Cameron, 2009; Lupien, 2013), saw the rise of the political Left to the presidency; this saw Latin American elites with power in the mainstream media portraying these leftist governments as putting “democracy in jeopardy” (Carvalho et al., 2020: 222) and performed the role of political opposition to them (Farah, 2010). Their political positions tended to be very clear, acting “in collusion with or opposition to certain dominant groups” (de Ancos et al., 2014: 232).

Resultantly, alternative media in the region became a means to counter the right-leaning mainstream media. In the early 2000s, social media and the rise of blogs played a big role (Carvalho et al., 2020). Harlow and Johnson (2011: 1370) noted alternative media’s offer of a “participatory, interactive approach to news coverage that could prompt greater credibility among readers”, becoming effective sites of ideological resistance (Gumucio-Dagron, 2012).

In Chile, for instance, the student movements, which have prompted much political change to take place in the country, have always taken to alternative media outlets to disseminate their ideas and opinions, and used it to challenge the criminalization of their movement, given that the mainstream media was so heavily monopolized and bound by elite interests (Pérez-Arredondo, 2019). It was through alternative media that they could construct alternative media frames – describing themselves as “qualified political actors” fighting for everyone’s well-being, rather than be seen as irrational mobs that were not legitimate political actors (Pérez-Arredondo, 2019: 250). Seoane and Hornidge (2020: 295) similarly discussed the alternative media coverage of the riots in Brazil in June 2013 as distinctly different from the “conservative political editorial lines that prevailed” in the mainstream media of that country, which enabled the disseminating of information critical to the establishment. The nature of alternative media as left-leaning is hence more clearly defined in this region than in Western-centric literature that refers to the association of alternative media to radical groups from the Left and Right.

This is also a region not unfamiliar with conflict and dictatorships. During those times, alternative media may rise to allow a greater expression of opinion, such as in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, when it underwent a military dictatorship (Kucinski, 1991), or in Colombia, when alternative media, particularly community radio stations, rose to “heal the wounds of the war” (Casanova et al., 2019: 1392) and “build a place of peace” (p. 1395), particularly after the last peace agreement was signed between the government and the FARC-EP guerrilla in 2016 after 4 years of dialogue. The rural communities in Colombia could be reached through this medium to be heard and informed – enabling citizen reflections on peace and conflict – and become “partners in conflict resolution and reconciliation” (Casanova et al., 2019: 1392; Martinez-Roa and Ortega-Erazo, 2018; Pereira and Cadavid, 2011).

Middle East

Top-cited articles pertaining to alternative media in the Middle East focus on the authoritarian nature of governments there, creating “government-controlled mainstream mediscapes” (Ataman and Coban, 2018: 1018), where the media may experience “censorship and repression, self-censorship, surveillance, monitoring and control, gatekeeping, propaganda/ disinformation, acts of terror, anti-terror laws, the criminalization of encryption and/or anonymity, hate speech and harassment, and organized crime” (Carlsson and Pöyhtäri, 2017: 12).

In Turkey for instance, social media accounts are monitored, people arrested for their social media posts, media outlets closed, and journalists and media workers jailed for voicing critical or dissenting views of the establishment (Ataman and Coban, 2018). Turkey’s “conglomerate press”, owned by large holding companies with close ties to political parties or that prioritize economic interests of their owners have left journalists with “no room for editorial independence” (Ersoy, 2016: 253). Alternative media therefore becomes an avenue through which journalists seek “ways to circumvent censors” (Hem, 2014: 5) – such as by using specially protected hardware and encrypted software and applications (Leistert, 2012) – to create a space of sharing and collaboration, “linking activists from different spheres of society to movements” and “creating common forums for participatory debate” (Ataman and Coban, 2018: 1018).

In the Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, the narrative of state-controlled mainstream media systems continues, where broadcasting and traditional press are government regulated (Dashti, 2009). The Internet has become a place for alternative media writing, forums and weblogs to emerge to provide up-to-date news and analysis, including analysis on the political situation (Dashti, 2009). There, they may formulate opinions and exchange views without direct influence or control of political institutions (Al-Qarni, 2004), much like the roles that alternative media plays in the liberal West; free and open communication between men and women are also allowed for the first time online, previously deemed “impossible and forbidden” (Dashti, 2009: 98), enabling the creation of larger communities. Alternative media in Kuwait, for instance, has been able to utilize “critical language” to describe the royal family, make claims of corruption of high-ranking government officials, and “monitor, refute and criticize” the local press for inaccurate reports; banned articles by local columnists and satirical cartoons of the royal family and political system of the country have also been able to circulate online (Dashti, 2009: 107).

Alternative media research in Israel is also highly cited, noting the role of alternative media to present a different version of reality not imposed by the state. It notes the situation of Israeli journalism, where mainstream media had aligned itself with Zionist ideology, given the birth of the new state in 1948, and journalists were “unable to position themselves as critical observers” (Meyers, 2008: 379), reflecting the journalistic cultures of many developing nations (Zelizer, 2004). Publication policies were “restrained and attentive to the authorities’ requests” (Meyers, 2008: 379) and were supportive of the Zionist ideal, applicable to journalists working in the party-affiliated newspapers and privately owned commercial newspapers (Meyers, 2008). This reduced trust in the media and set within a national context of conflict, led to more skepticism about traditional media in Israel (Elvestad et al., 2018).

From the late 1950s, a slow evolution of a “professional journalistic consciousness” in Israel (Meyers, 2008: 380) saw alternative media outlets like Haolam Hazeh emerge to provide an alternative point of view and ways to understand Israeli reality that was detached from the establishment, through “critical reporting” and “constructing an alternative reality populated by alternative heroes and alternative cultural trends” (Meyers, 2008: 387). Alternative media in Israel is also seen to highlight realities that may be marginalized or denied by mainstream media, such as issues of human rights of Palestinians at checkpoints set up by the Israeli army (Wiesslitz and Ashuri, 2011). This point on painting alternative realities comes across more strongly in literature pertaining to this part of the world than in Western-centric research.

Discussion and conclusion

In addressing RQ1 on how “alternativeness” has been viewed in regions of the non-West, this study finds notable differences in how alternative media is defined and discussed; results are summarized in the supplementary file, titled Table 1. Closer analysis of the differences in regional findings has enabled the authors to propose a five-factor framework, as part of RQ2, that more clearly unpacks the influences on “alternativeness” in the non-West.

Table 1.

Top-cited articles analyzed and key regional findings.

Region	Author/ Year	Case studies	Regional findings/ Themes of “alternativeness”
Africa	Moyo (2011)	Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa	- Dictatorships in the region mean lower trust in state-disseminated information - Alternative media circulates subaltern or anti-state discourses but impact remains low due to disparities in participation within the working class and rural populations - Alternative media predominantly disseminates views from the middle class, educated and wealthy, who are “moral reformists” rather than “revolutionaries”
	Moyo (2009)
	Makinen and Kuira (2008)
	Chibuwe and Ureke (2016)
	Moyo (2007)
	Mopfu (2015)
	Wasserman and De Beer (2005)
	Ndlovu (2011)
Asia	Lee et al. (2015)	Hong Kong, Singapore	- Alternative media in Hong Kong seeks to mobilize citizens to create large-scale change, amid rising distrust of mainstream media and growing influence of the Chinese central government on Hong Kong society - Alternative media in Singapore is used to increase public awareness and discussions on topics, pertaining often to social rather than political issues, amid considerable public trust in the government and state influence on the press
	Lee (2015)
	Tang (2015)
	Lee and Chan (2016)
	Chen et al. (2016)
	Chan et al. (2017)
	Leung and Lee (2014)
	Duffy et al. (2018)
	Soon and Soh (2014)
	Zhang (2016)
Latin America	Carvalho et al. (2020)	Chile, Brazil, Colombia	- Mainstream media ownership in the region is highly concentrated, often right-leaning and conservative, promotes media owners’ interests, and is critical of left-leaning governments - Alternative media is therefore left-leaning to counter mainstream media, disseminates alternative ideas, and mobilizes citizens - Plays a role to reflect on years of war and conflict
	Pérez-Arredondo (2019)
	De Ancos et al. (2014)
	Casanova et al. (2019)
	Martinez-Roa and Ortega-Erazo (2018)
Middle East	Ataman and Çoban (2018)	Israel, Turkey, Kuwait	- Alternative media creates a space for participatory debate and critical reporting, countering mainstream media that is heavily censored and controlled by the state - Presents alternative versions of reality not imposed by the state
	Ersoy (2016)
	Dashti (2009)
	Meyers (2008)
	Elvestad et al. (2018)
	Wiesslitz and Ashuri (2011)

First, the regions analyzed reveal that the shape the alternative media takes on is dependent on the nature of mainstream media in that country or region, and what it seems to lack. In Africa and the Middle East, alternative media circulates alternative worldviews and orders of reality beyond that offered by the heavily state-controlled press; in Asia, the alternative media circulates alternative opinions to those expressed in the mainstream media which might have close ties with the government; in Latin America, alternative media tends to be left-leaning, to counter the right-leaning mainstream media that advocates the interests of their media owners.

Relatedly, the nature of the mainstream media in a country is dependent on the nature of the political system of that country. Dictatorships in the African region have meant strict control of the mainstream media to disseminate only state-approved messages; authoritarian governments in Asia and the Middle East keep a close watch on content disseminated from mainstream media outlets; and left-leaning governments in Latin America have created a strong right-leaning force in their media system that exist to counter and critique them. The state plays a much more significant role in the evolution of the press system in the non-West compared to the liberal West, where there is minimal government intervention in the press and capital tends to play a larger influencing role, as profit-seeking media outlets prioritize advertisers and audiences.

This study also discovers, as a key influencing factor of “alternativeness”, the question of who is producing the alternative media. In Africa, because the Internet is mostly accessed by the middle class rather than the working class and rural populations, content that gets disseminated tends to be less “revolutionary” and more associated with moral reforms. In Asia, alternative media produced by a population that has greater trust in the government, as in the case of Singapore, tends to increase awareness and discussion on issues, more so than to generate large-scale social movements to change the status quo. And in Latin America, political positions taken by those who produce content for alternative media directly impact the nature of what “alternativeness” is within that society (i.e. its left-leaning tendencies).

Another influencing factor of “alternativeness” is how the alternative media is produced. Most of the top-cited articles analyzed refer to alternative and social media concurrently, indicating that such sources are largely a ground-up initiative involving the creation of counter-hegemonic spaces that extend beyond the control of the state. Citizen communication and participation is emphasized here, in all the regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where citizen experiences, anti-establishment discourses, and alternative versions of reality conceived of by the people are able to circulate. Alternativeness is therefore tied to what matters to the people, rather than what is imposed by the state.

Finally, another factor influencing “alternativeness” is the goal or purpose of the alternative media. This relates to what the alternative media outlets set out to accomplish. They may be used as a platform to facilitate citizen discussions, or used more specifically to drive public opinion in certain directions, for instance, in times of elections, war and conflict, or reconciliation, such as in select cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East; alternative media may also be used for political mobilization and advocacy, and the creation of large-scale structural changes.

From the five influencing factors mentioned above, it may be seen that alternative media tends to rise to counter the offerings of mainstream media, often in response to the political system and its regulation of or influence on the press; this is what amplifies the drive of these media outlets to disseminate more alternative perspectives and ideas. That said, who is producing the alternative media, with what purpose, and how they are producing it may directly affect the product of these media outlets and their subsequent impact on society.

Indeed, this paper reiterates that “alternative media” cannot be understood as a monolithic term across contexts; the nature of “alternativeness” is diverse and may vary across both space (i.e. in different parts of the world) and time (i.e. shaped by different moments in history). Relatedly, there is no one way to understand the impact and effectiveness of alternative media, given the involvement of different parties and the different roles that alternative media may play in their societies. Comparisons between regions are therefore not meant to draw out deficiencies, but rather to deepen understanding of differing systems.

While one may note that a semblance of these five influencing factors have appeared in research from Western scholars – for instance, Holt et al. (2019) discuss how alternative media may differ from mainstream media in its content and style, its content producers at the micro level, its publishing routines and media organization at the meso level, and its function and impact on the societal structure at the macro level – this study offers a comparative analysis that originates for the first time from the Global South/ non-West, revealing a five-factor framework of influences on “alternativeness” deemed most significant by scholars there, based on circumstances unique to these regions.

Limitations to this study must be considered, however. The decision to use the Scopus database and to analyze journal articles in English might favour Western-centric research where English is the lingua franca; this database however provided a common corpus and system of citation that facilitated the comparative analysis. Additionally, top-cited articles selected were determined based on author affiliations rather than regions discussed in the contents of the articles – this is tied to several articles discussing more than one region of the world, which made them difficult to place within specific geographical categories – this might mean that some top-cited articles written by scholars not from those regions might have been left out. This was an issue that was inherent to this research method and hence this study cannot assert that it has accounted for all the voices of top-cited scholars for each region, but rather those that were aligned in article title, author affiliation, and geographical location.

Another limitation would relate to the decision to choose only top-cited articles for this study, rather than to offer a more complete view of articles produced in the region with a larger sample that would be more representative. Even among the top-cited articles in the sample, only those that offered substantive insights into this paper’s research questions were referenced, to ensure relevance. This also meant that extensive elaborations on individual countries could not be had, but the article strived to provide an overview of the literature instead, as was its intended goal. It is hoped that this study can provide useful information to scholars keen to enhance their knowledge of alternative media across regions, leading potentially to more transregional research in the field as media environments and popular movements globalize.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Shangyuan Wu

Thorsten Quandt

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Dr Shangyuan Wu is a senior lecturer and media researcher at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Communications and New Media. She specializes in research on journalism in the digital age, with a focus on automated, data, and immersive journalism. She is also interested in global journalism studies, the political economy of communication, media and democracy, and comparative media analysis. She has published in the peer-reviewed journals of Digital Journalism, Journalism, Journalism Studies, Information, Communication and Society, and Journalism Practice, among others. She has a background in journalism, having worked previously as a senior broadcast journalist and presenter in Singapore.

Professor Thorsten Quandt is the Professor of Online Communication at the University of Münster, Germany. His work focuses on societal changes connected to the Internet and new media. Recent research includes studies on “dark participation”, online propaganda, dysfunctional online use and the transformation of journalism. His research group’s approaches and methods operate at the intersection of communication studies, psychology, and data science. Previous academic stations include the University of Hohenheim, the Free University Berlin and LMU Munich, and he was a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of Oxford and the University of California (Santa Barbara).

Mr Saïd Unger is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Communication at University of Münster (Germany). His research relates to the study of disinformation, alternative media and the science of science using computational methods such as social network analysis and natural language processing. He studied Sociology and History at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena and Sociology and social research at the University of Bremen.

References

Al-Qarni

(2004) The information revolution, globalisation, and the Arab world: a study of the new media (satellite broadcasting and the internet) and its impact on the politics culture of the Arab world. PhD, School of Social Science and Cultural Studies. University of Sussex.

Ataman

Çoban

(2018) Counter-surveillance and alternative new media in Turkey. Information, Communication & Society 21(7): 1014–1029. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2018.1451908

Atton

(2002) Alternative Media. Sage Publications.

Atton

(2006) Far-right media on the internet: culture, discourse and power. New Media & Society 8(4): 573–587. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444806065653

Blumler

Gurevitch

(1995) The Crisis of Public Communication. Psychology Press.

Braun

Clarke

(2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2): 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Cameron

(2009) Latin America’s left turns: beyond good and bad. Third World Quarterly 30(2): 331–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590802681082

Carlsson

Pöyhtäri

(2017) Words of introduction. In: Carlsson

Pöyhtäri

(eds) The Assault on Journalism. Nordicom, pp. 11–17.

Carvalho

Albuquerque

dos Santos

(2020) Brazilian blogosfera progressista: digital vanguards in dark times. Triple C 18(1): 219–235. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1126

10.

Casanova

Tapias Hernández

Pérez Quintero

(2019) Community radio and peace building in Colombia. Communication, interaction and participatory planning for the post-conflict. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 74: 1391–1410.

11.

Castells

(2012) Networks of Outrage and Hope. Polity Press.

12.

Chadha

Bhat

(2022) Alternative news media and critique of mainstream journalism in India: the case of OpIndia. Digital Journalism 10(8): 1283–1301. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2118143

13.

Chan

Chen

Lee

(2017) Examining the roles of mobile and social media in political participation: a cross-national analysis of three Asian societies using a communication mediation approach. New Media & Society 19(12): 2003–2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816653190

14.

Chen

Chan

Lee

(2016) Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. Chinese Journal of Communication 9(4): 348–366. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2016.1210182

15.

Chibuwe

Ureke

(2016) Political gladiators’ on Facebook in Zimbabwe: a discursive analysis of intra–Zimbabwe African National Union – PF cyber wars; Baba Jukwa versus Amai Jukwa. Media, Culture & Society 38(8): 1247–1260. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716671492

16.

Chua

(1998) Singapore. In: Latif

(ed) Walking the Tightrope, Press Freedom and Professional Standards in Asia. AMIC, pp. 142–155.

17.

Cushion

McDowell-Naylor

Thomas

(2021) Why national media systems matter: a longitudinal analysis of how UK left-wing and right-wing alternative media critique mainstream media (2015–2018). Journalism Studies 22(5): 633–652. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2021.1893795

18.

Dashti

(2009) The role of online journalism in political disputes in Kuwait. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 2(20): 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr.2.1and2.91/1

19.

de Ancos

Soler

Mata

(2014) Media, actors of references and power in Paraguay. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social 69: 229–247.

20.

Downing

(2001) Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Sage.

21.

Duffy

Ling

Tandoc

(2018) The people have spoken (the bastards?). Journalism Practice 12(9): 1130–1147. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1372696

22.

Elvestad

Phillips

Feuerstein

(2018) Can trust in traditional news media explain cross-national differences in news exposure of young people online? Digital Journalism 6(2): 216–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1332484

23.

Ersoy

(2016) War–peace journalism in the Turkish press: countries come to the brink of war. International Communication Gazette 78(3): 247–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048516630717

24.

Farah

(2010) Entidades de Imprensa e Fecomércio estudam ir ao STF contra plano de direitos humanos. March 18. O Globo. https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/entidades-de-imprensa-fecomercio-estudam-ir-ao-stf-contra-plano-de-direitos-humanos-3037045#ixzz2HndMBDbY (Accessed 02 April 2016).

25.

Gumucio-Dagron

(2012) Comunicación para el cambio social: clave del Desarrollo participativo. Signo y Pensamiento 30(58): 26–39.

26.

Hackett

Zhao

(1998) Sustaining Democracy?: Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Broadview Press.

27.

Harcup

(2011) Alternative journalism as active citizenship. Journalism 12(1): 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884910385191

28.

Harlow

Johnson

(2011) Overthrowing the protest paradigm? How the New York times, global voices and Twitter covered the Egyptian revolution. International Journal of Communication 5: 1359–1374.

29.

Heft

Mayerhöffer

Reinhardt

Knüpfer

(2020) Beyond Breitbart: Comparing Right‐Wing Digital News Infrastructures in Six Western Democracies. Policy and Internet 12(1): 20–45.

30.

Hem

(2014) Evading the Censors: Critical Journalism in Authoritarian States. University of Oxford. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

31.

Holt

Figenschou

Frischlich

(2019) Key dimensions of alternative news media. Digital Journalism 7(7): 860–869. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2019.1625715

32.

Jackson

Welles

(2015) Hijacking #myNYPD: social media dissent and networked counterpublics. Journal of Communication 65: 932–952. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12185

33.

Kucinski

(1991) Jornalistas e revolucionários: nos tempos da imprensa alternativa. Editora Página Aberta.

34.

Kumar

(2019) India’s Media Can’t Speak Truth to Power. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/02/indias-media-cant-speak-truth-to-power-modi-bjp-journalism/

35.

Lee

(2015) Social movement as civic education: communication activities and understanding of civil disobedience in the Umbrella Movement. Chinese Journal of Communication 8(4): 393–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2015.1057192

36.

Lee

Chan

(2016) Digital media activities and mode of participation in a protest campaign: a study of the Umbrella Movement. Information, Communication & Society 19(1): 4–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1093530

37.

Lee

Leung

(2015) Social media and Umbrella Movement: insurgent public sphere in formation. Chinese Journal of Communication 8(4): 356–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2015.1088874

38.

Leistert

(2012) Resistance against cyber-surveillance within social movements and how surveillance adapts. Surveillance & Society 9(4): 441–456. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v9i4.4345

39.

Leung

Lee

(2014) Cultivating an active online counterpublic: examining usage and political impact of internet alternative media. The International Journal of Press/Politics 19(3): 340–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161214530787

40.

Lupien

(2013) The media in Venezuela and Bolivia: attacking the “Bad Left” from below. Latin American Perspectives 40(3): 226–246.

41.

Makinen

Kuira

(2008) Social media and postelection crisis in Kenya. The International Journal of Press/Politics 13(3): 328–335. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161208319409

42.

Márquez-Ramírez

Mellado

Humanes

, et al. (2020) Detached or interventionist? Comparing the performance of watchdog journalism in transitional, advanced and non-democratic countries. The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(1): 53–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219872155

43.

Martinez-Roa

Ortega-Erazo

(2018) Perceptions and participation in community radio stations in Nariño-Colombia. Communicar XXVI(54): 81–90. https://doi.org/10.3916/C54-2018-08

44.

McCargo

(2003) Media and Politics in Pacific Asia. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203402542

45.

Medeiros

Badr

(2022) Strengthening journalism from the margins: engaged journalism in Brazil and Egypt. Digital Journalism 10(8): 1342–1362. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2022.2078386

46.

Meyers

(2008) Contextualizing alternative journalism. Journalism Studies 9(3): 374–391. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700801999170

47.

Mopfu

(2015) When the subaltern speaks: citizen journalism and genocide “victims” voices online. African Journalism Studies 36(4): 82–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2015.1119491

48.

Moreira

(2016) Brazil. In: Noam

(ed) Who Owns the World’s Media. Media Concentration and Ownership Around the World. Oxford University Press, pp. 606–640.

49.

Moyo

(2007) Alternative media, diasporas and the mediation of the Zimbabwe crisis. Ecquid Novi 28(1–2): 81–105.

50.

Moyo

(2009) Citizen journalism and the parallel market of information in Zimbabwe’s 2008 election. Journalism Studies 10(4): 551–567. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700902797291

51.

Moyo

(2011) Blogging down a dictatorship: human rights, citizen journalists and the right to communicate in Zimbabwe. Journalism 12(6): 745–760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884911405469

52.

Mujica

Bachmann

(2015) How Chilean editors perceive and define the role of melodrama in television news. Palabra Clave 18(2): 312–340.

53.

Mutsvairo

Borges-Rey

Bebawi

, et al. (2021) Ontologies of journalism in the global south. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 98(4): 996–1016. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211048883

54.

Ndlovu

(2011) The meaning of post-apartheid Zulu media. Communicatio 37(2): 268–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2011.604172

55.

Pereira

Cadavid

(2011) Comunicación, desarrollo y cambio social: interrelaciones entre comunicación, movimientos ciudadanos y medios. Bogotá́. COL. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana: Universidad Minuto de Dios: UNESCO.

56.

Pérez-Arredondo

(2019) Motives and social actor positioning: the representation of the Chilean student movement in the national press. Communication & Society 32(4): 239–255. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.32.4.239-255

57.

Rauch

(2016) Are there still alternatives? Relationships between alternative media and mainstream media in a converged environment. Sociology Compass 10(9): 756–767. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12403

58.

Robinson

White

(1998) The Democratic Developmental State: Political and Institutional Design. Oxford University Press.

59.

Seoane

Hornidge

(2020) The social shaping of media technologies’ multiple uses: the case of Mídia NINJA in Brazil, Information. Communication & Society 23(2): 288–303.

60.

Shoemaker

Reese

(1996) Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content. White Plains. New York: Longman.

61.

Soon

Soh

(2014) Engagement@web 2.0 between the government and citizens in Singapore: dialogic communication on Facebook? Asian Journal of Communication 24(1): 42–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2013.851722

62.

Steppat

Castro

Esser

(2023) What News Users Perceive as ‘Alternative Media’ Varies between Countries: How Media Fragmentation and Polarization Matter. Digital Journalism 11(5): 741–761.

63.

Tan

(2008, August 9). Rise of Online Activists. The Straits Times, p. B11.

64.

Tandoc

Jr. Lim

Ling

(2018) Defining ‘Fake News’ a typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism 6(2): 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1360143

65.

Tang

(2015) Mobilization by images: TV screen and mediated instant grievances in the Umbrella Movement. Chinese Journal of Communication 8(4): 338–355. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2015.1086398

66.

Tinmaz

Lee

Fanea-Ivanovici

, et al. (2022) A systematic review on digital literacy. Smart Learning Environments 9: 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-022-00204-y

67.

Wang

(2010) Beyond de-westernizing communication research: an introduction. In: Wang

(ed) De-westernizing Communication Research: Altering Questions and Changing Frameworks. Routledge, pp. 1–17.

68.

Wasserman

de Beer

(2005) Which public? Whose interest? The South African media and its role during the first ten years of democracy. Critical Arts 19(1-2): 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560040585310041

69.

Wiesslitz

Ashuri

(2011) ‘Moral journalists’: the emergence of new intermediaries of news in an age of digital media. Journalism 12(8): 1035–1051. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884910388236

70.

(2010) Can East Asia Produce its Own “Al-Jazeera”? Assessing the Potential of Channel NewsAsia as a Global Media Contra-Flow. Theses (School of Communication), Simon Fraser University.

71.

(2018) Uncovering alternative ‘journalism crisis’ narratives in Singapore and Hong Kong: when state influences interact with Western liberal ideals in a changing media landscape. Journalism 19(9-10): 1291–1307. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917753786

72.

(2021a) As mainstream and alternative media converge?: critical perspectives from Asia on online media development. Journalism Practice 17: 1357–1373. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1976072

73.

(2021b) Data “objectivity” in a time of coronavirus: uncovering the potential impact of state influence on the production of data-driven news. Digital Journalism 9(9): 1303–1320. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1942111

74.

(2022) Evaluating “Exemplary Data Journalism” from Asia: an exploration into South China morning post’s data stories on China and the world. Journalism 24: 2042–2058. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849221093509

75.

(2023) Data journalism and the impact of politics: examining data stories produced across different political systems. Journalism Practice 19: 1481–1498. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2023.2263753

76.

(2024) Why context matters in code studies: exploring ways to globalize/diversify understandings of algorithmic and AI use in journalism. Digital Journalism 12(7): 1052–1058.

77.

Zelizer

(2004) Taking Journalism Seriously: News and the Academy. Sage.

78.

Zhang

(2016) Social media and elections in Singapore: comparing 2011 and 2015. Chinese Journal of Communication 9(4): 367–384. https://doi.org/10.1080/17544750.2016.1231129