Research

The number and variety of information offerings on the Internet have increased enormously in recent years. At the same time, media usage has changed and differentiated. Online content from established media is still frequently used. However, alternative political online media  (APOM) are also being used to supplement or replace established media. While there are already initial findings on the use of APOM and users' characteristics, we need to learn more about the content of APOM and its context of emergence.

Due to this research deficit, in this project, we first examine the content of APOM in an automated content analysis compared to established media. The initial question of the project is the extent and nature of populism in APOM. As possible explanations of populism in APOM, we consider various factors and levels of influence. First, we explain populism regarding the degree of professional competence and individual role conceptions of news producers. Second, we draw on news routines and news values as explanations. Third, we are interested in users' news preferences and underlying political motives and attitudes. Fourth, we incorporate the socio-technical affordances of social media platforms.

We implement the project in three sub-studies. In the first sub-study, we examine German-language APOM compared to high-reach established online media in Germany in large-scale automated content analysis. In this analysis, we target original posts from news websites and posts on the social media platforms YouTube and Twitter. We carefully validate the research instruments through manual content analyses. In the second sub-study, we qualitatively survey APOM producers about their perceived news routines, role attitudes, professional background, and populist attitudes. We validate these statements by manual content analyses of their published articles. In the third sub-study, we survey APOM users on their media repertoire used, their participation in APOM, political motives for their participation, topic preferences, and populist attitudes. Further, a manual content analysis examines the published comments of the active APOM user community on the extent and nature of populism and on the political motives of participation that are publicly visible in the content. We synthesize the results of the three sub-studies into an overall model.

The project results are scientifically relevant for situating newer APOM in the context of the media system. In addition, we can evaluate the extent to which they contribute to a democratic expansion of discourse. The results provide journalists and policymakers insight into how APOM presents its content and the role producers and users play in the process.

Principal Investigators: Prof. Dr. Ines Engelmann, Prof. Dr. Emese Domahidi (TU Ilmenau)
Research Associates: N.N.

Duration: January 2024 to December 2026

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Considering theories about the public sphere, user comments on news websites are very interesting for several reasons and highly relevant for empirical research. Unlike letters to the editor, user comments are not only addressed to journalistic editors, but also to the general public. In contrast to blogs and other forms of political expression on the internet, they enable mass media participation in public discourses directly following journalistic content. At least potentially, user comments reach the same audience as the articles on news websites themselves.

Technically, comment sections create the prerequisites for deliberative interactions through the reciprocal change of addressees and speaker roles. Regardless of how many readers actually perceive user comments, they can also have an impact on the course and structures of public communication. This is because the circle of journalistic addressees follows the course of the discussion and the audience preferences expressed there in any case.

The project therefore firstly asks how extensive and with which quality users in the comment section on professional news websites discuss with each other. Secondly, explanatory framework conditions are included that can promote or hinder the interaction between users and the degree of deliberation: Influencing factors of the media organizations (e.g., journalistic and economic goals), their journalistic offerings (e.g. topics, news factors), the design of the commentary area (e.g. moderation strategies, arrangement of postings) as well as the speakers (e.g. speaker type, political position). In addition, the selection criteria used to publish user comments on news websites (input-output content analysis) will be examined. Finally, motives and strategies of (journalists in) editorial offices are identified, which illuminate the handling of user comments from a journalistic point of view.

From a methodological point of view, the innovations of the project consist first of all in capturing the scope and quality of user comments with a relational content analysis. In this way, interactions between users as a form of networking can be better depicted than in previous content analyses. Secondly, a multi-level analysis is used to map the relative influence of the framework conditions mentioned, which are surveyed both by content analysis and by means of surveys, on the extent and quality of (deliberative) interactions in terms of methodological statistics.

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Ines Engelmann
Research Associate: Hanna Marzinkowski, M.A.

Duration: October 2015 to June 2019

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Bertram Scheufele
Research Associate: Dr. Ines Engelmann

Duration: 2007 bis 2011

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)