International Communication Gazette

In this article, we critically examine the degree to which left-wing and right-wing alternative media appeared in US and UK mainstream media. We develop a distinctive comparative approach by carrying out a comprehensive content analysis of references to US and UK alternative media sites between 2017 and 2021 in each country's mainstream news media systems. The study identified 3481 references in total and revealed that mainstream media featured alternative right-wing sites far more than left-wing sites, and their credibility as information sources was rarely questioned or challenged by professional journalists. Our cross-national comparative study also identified where different media and political systems enhanced and moderated the perspectives of alternative media, and their contributors in mainstream media. We argue that the more national media systems evolve into market-driven and deregulated environments then the more the editorial influence of right-wing partisan media will increase and conflate with the world of mainstream media.

This work is grounded and inspired by studies on journalism's vulnerabilities in times of crisis, role performance, support systems and calls for collective resilience in the face of emerging/new threats to journalism practice. The study adopts a comparative approach and goes beyond what has already been examined by critically assessing resilience strategies that journalists develop to cope with professional threats that have emerged with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The study focuses on journalism practice in Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus and Malta. Its findings indicate that in the face of this crisis, journalists showed remarkable resilience despite the lack of professional support systems as they turned to their profession's highest values to draw strength and support. The hardships they faced, both personally and professionally, did not deter them from fulfilling their roles, but fuelled them with persistence and rekindled their faith in journalism as a vocation.