<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Political communication has taken new and complex forms within the contemporary hybrid media system. In this article, we examine how political campaigning that draws on television news forms utilises the increasingly blurred boundaries between news journalism and politics online. We assess the digital television news channel Riks, which during the 2022 national election was operated by the Sweden Democrats party and distributed via YouTube. Deploying a mixed-methods approach, we analysed all videos published by Riks four weeks prior to the election. Results show that Riks blends descriptive, interpretative, and outrage genres, and strategically frames the most important political issues of the election campaign in favour of the party’s policies. Hence, the study contributes to political communication scholarship by emphasising how news has become an integral part of strategic party communication, challenging established scholarly conceptualisations of alternative media and hyperpartisan news.</p>
</abstract>

Political communication has taken new and complex forms within the contemporary hybrid media system. In this article, we examine how political campaigning that draws on television news forms utilises the increasingly blurred boundaries between news journalism and politics online. We assess the digital television news channel Riks, which during the 2022 national election was operated by the Sweden Democrats party and distributed via YouTube. Deploying a mixed-methods approach, we analysed all videos published by Riks four weeks prior to the election. Results show that Riks blends descriptive, interpretative, and outrage genres, and strategically frames the most important political issues of the election campaign in favour of the party’s policies. Hence, the study contributes to political communication scholarship by emphasising how news has become an integral part of strategic party communication, challenging established scholarly conceptualisations of alternative media and hyperpartisan news.

Political communication as television news: Party-produced news of the Sweden Democrats during the 2022 election campaign

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Political communication has taken new and complex forms within the contemporary hybrid media system. In this article, we examine how political campaigning that...

	Videos (n)	Share (%)	Mean video length (minutes)
Desk news	81	25	2.9
Studio discussion/analysis	76	24	19.3
Interview	60	19	9.5
Solo outrage	43	14	4.2
In-situ reportage	39	12	4.2
Uncommented party events	11	3	33.7
Satire/comedy	8	3	5.8
Total	318	100	9.5

	Videos (n)	Share (%)
The election campaign	91	31
Criminality	58	20
Immigration/Immigrants	54	18
Energy	44	15
Culture	21	7
Environment	10	3
Economy	7	2
International politics	6	2
Social issues	4	1
Science and education	2	1
Total	297	100

	Length (minutes)	Views	Likes	Comments
Mean	9.5	24,056	1,295	173
Median	4.3	16,230	1,120	140
Minimum	0.2	2,844	211	3
Maximum	108.7	419,476	9,166	1,554
Total sum	3,004.9	7,649,815	411,899	55,085
Total videos (N)	317^*	318	318	318

Political communication as television news: Party-produced news of the Sweden Democrats during the 2022 election campaign

Published Online: Mar 12, 2024

Page range: 66 - 91

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2024-0008

Keywords
alternative media, hybridity, parasitic news, political communication, hyperpartisan news, far-right, Sweden Democrats, YouTube

© 2024 Mattias Ekman et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

FIGURE 1

The generic consistency

The topical structure

Sample characteristics

Political communication as television news: Party-produced news of the Sweden Democrats during the 2022 election campaign

Published Online: Mar 12, 2024

Page range: 66 - 91

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2024-0008

Keywordsalternative media, hybridity, parasitic news, political communication, hyperpartisan news, far-right, Sweden Democrats, YouTube

© 2024 Mattias Ekman et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

FIGURE 1

The generic consistency

The topical structure

Sample characteristics

Keywords
alternative media, hybridity, parasitic news, political communication, hyperpartisan news, far-right, Sweden Democrats, YouTube