Who are the users of Danish alternative media? A survey study on the prevalence of alternative news use in Denmark and profiles of the users

Over the past decade, alternative media have increased in numbers across the Nordic countries. They position themselves as correctives of mainstream media (Holt et al., 2019), whose credibility they often blatantly attack (e.g., Figenschou & Ihlebæk, 2019; Mayerhöffer, 2021), and disseminate highly partisan content in pursuit of their own (sometimes radical) ideological or party-political agendas (e.g., Brems, 2022; Nygaard, 2019; von Nordheim et al., 2019). At the same time, some of them mimic a neutral style (Klawier et al., 2022; Nygaard, 2019) associated with professional journalism, making it more difficult to clearly distinguish them from their mainstream counterparts. This upsurge of alternative media has been enabled by digital development where any amateur or political activist can launch their own news site (Leung & Lee, 2014), and conversely, citizens can pick and choose the news content they want and wall themselves off from the rest (Helberger & Wojcieszak, 2018). Accordingly, there has been a similar upsurge in concerns that alternative media might fuel political extremity (Heft et al., 2020) and “fears about alternative media users inhabiting so-called filter bubbles and echo chambers that reinforce rather than challenge their ideological convictions” (Cushion, 2023: 9). Consequentially, alternative news users have stereotypically been portrayed as “conspiracy-loons with insufficient media literacy or even prone for radicalization” (Schwarzenegger 2021: 107; see also Noppari et al., 2019).

Recent scholarship has, however, painted a more nuanced picture of alternative news users. Survey studies suggest that they do not turn their backs on mainstream news (Andersen et al., 2021; Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Schulz, 2021), and qualitative interview studies challenge the notion of them lacking media literacy (Noppari et al., 2019; Schwarzenegger, 2021). Yet, studies on alternative news users are still limited in number, and existing evidence on associations between alternative news use and level of education, political interest, and ideological orientation points in different directions (Andersen et al., 2021; Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Bach, 2021; Müller & Schulz, 2021; Newman et al., 2018; Schulze, 2020). This calls for more research into what characterises the users of alternative media in the Nordic countries as well as how large the audiences are that they reach, especially in the Danish case, where no such user studies are currently available. Moreover, most existing scholarship has focused on users of right-wing alternative media or treated alternative news users as one group, leaving differences between users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media, and alternative media with different degrees of alternativeness, more or less unexplored. Finally, despite limited empirical support for the existence of filter bubbles and echo chambers (Arguedas et al., 2022), alternative media continue to be associated with such concerns in public discourse (Cushion, 2023: 131). This demonstrates the need for solid and sober research qualification of public debate on the potential negative implications of the spread and use of alternative media.

Against this backdrop, I explore how widespread the use of a broad left-to-right spectrum of Danish alternative media is among the adult Danish population and what characterises their users in terms of sociodemographic traits, political interest, ideological orientation, and mainstream news use. To my knowledge, this is the first study to explore these questions in a Danish context. In doing so, I aim to further understanding of what characterises the parts of the population who are attracted by (different) alternative media and contribute to ongoing scholarly – and not least public – debate on potential negative impacts associated with the use hereof.

How alternative media should be defined continues to be debated. Originally, the term was used to denote mainly left-wing outlets whose promotion of progressive agendas, capitalist critique, and non-commercial production structures were generally considered democratic assets (e.g., Atton, 2002; Downing, 2001; Rauch, 2019). More recently, however, the term has been used for denoting (predominantly right-wing) online news sites, and attention has turned to the potential democratic perils associated with their explicit partisanship and criticism of the media and political mainstream (for a review of this development, see Holt, 2020). This has led some to argue that the term alternative media should be reserved for news outlets possessing the traits originally associated with it (Rae, 2021).

In this article, I consider alternative media an umbrella term and adopt the non-normative definition proposed by Holt and colleagues (2019). Following this, alternative media represent “a proclaimed and/or (self-) perceived corrective, opposing the overall tendency of public discourse emanating from what is perceived as the dominant mainstream media in a given system [emphasis original]” (Holt et al., 2019: 862). From this perspective, the defining trait of alternative media is their proclaimed position as correctives of the media mainstream, and the term can be applied to left-wing as well as right-wing cases pursuing different (more or less radical) ideological goals. Moreover, this definition considers the mainstream–alternative schism as a spectrum rather than binary categories (see also Kenix, 2011). Thus, any news outlet can be more or less alternative on different parameters, for example, their degree of deviation from professional journalistic norms (Holt et al., 2019).

Turning to the empirical traits of Nordic alternative media, in a study on six right-wing Norwegian alternative media, Figenschou and Ihlebæk (2019) found that they criticise mainstream media for being politically biased, “politically correct”, distanced from the people, and for omitting immigration problems from coverage. Similar criticism was identified in five Danish right-wing alternative media (Mayerhöffer, 2021). Content analyses of right-wing German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish alternative media have revealed that they advocate their own, often immigration-critical, agendas (e.g., Mayerhöffer, 2021; Nygaard, 2019; von Nordheim et al., 2019) and attack political opponents (Mayerhöffer & Schwartz, 2020). Although these are characteristics that (right-wing) alternative media hold in common, recent studies suggest they are a heterogeneous group. For instance, some alternative media “radicalise” and openly advocate their partisanship, while others “normalise” by appearing as conventional news sites (Heft et al., 2020) and adopt a neutral style resembling traditional news (Klawier et al., 2022; Nygaard, 2019).

As this brief review indicates, much research positioned within the more recent strand of alternative media scholarship has focused on right-wing cases. However, studies including left-wing cases have found that they, too, can be characterised by mainstream media criticism and explicit partisanship (e.g., Brems, 2022, 2023; Cushion et al., 2021; McDowell-Naylor et al., 2023). Exemplifying this, Freudenthaler and Wessler (2022) found cases of both left-wing and right-wing German-language alternative media that came close to a detached style of reporting, or were corrosive and delegitimised their political opponents, for example, by portraying them as threats to German culture (right-wing outlets) or as racists (one left-wing outlet). These differences between alternative media, both regarding their ideological agendas and degrees of deviation from professional journalistic norms, raise the interesting question of whether they also attract different users (elaborated on below).

While a growing body of literature has shed light on the content that alternative media disseminate, we have only limited knowledge about how big the audiences are that their content reaches. A secondary analysis of data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report found that between 7 and 9 per cent of the populations in Finland, Austria, and Germany use right-wing alternative media and that 22 per cent do so in Sweden (Schulze, 2020). Other studies have arrived at estimates of 16 per cent in Sweden (Andersen et al., 2021) and between 7 and 28 per cent in Germany (Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Bach, 2021; Müller & Schulz, 2021). The differences should be viewed in light of the different measurements employed for tapping alternative news use (for an overview, see Appendix A).

Less is known about the prevalence of alternative news use in Denmark. In terms of supply, the Danish alternative media ecology is not as developed as that of Sweden and Germany (Heft et al., 2020). Based on web page rankings (Heft et al., 2020) and traffic to alternative media’s web pages, use hereof has been characterised as a niche phenomenon, with only the right-wing outlet Den Korte Avis having traffic comparable to that of established mainstream niche newspapers (Blach-Ørsten & Mayerhöffer, 2021). In the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, only Den Korte Avis is included, and data from recent years show that 2–6 per cent of Danes report using this outlet (Schrøder et al., 2018, 2021). One survey study using an open-ended question where respondents could name up to three alternative news sources they used arrived at a much higher estimate of 16 per cent of the population using alternative media (Steppat et al., 2021). This leads to the following research question:

RQ1. How widespread is the use of Danish alternative media among the adult Danish population?

Recent studies suggest that users of alternative media in Germany and Sweden are more likely to be male and belong to the younger parts of the population (Andersen et al., 2021; Müller & Schulz, 2021). In Sweden, alternative news orientation was found to be related to lower levels of education (Andersen et al., 2021), whereas frequent alternative news use was related to higher levels of education in Germany (Müller & Schulz, 2021). Any relationship with place of residence has not yet been investigated. In this regard, an interesting question is whether alternative news use is related to urban–rural divides, which has been identified as a new political cleavage (Hansen & Hjorth, 2021). This leads to the following research question:

RQ2. What sociodemographic traits characterise users of Danish alternative media with regards to 1) gender, 2) age, 3) level of education, and 4) place of residence?

The relationship between alternative news use and political interest is also unclear. One study found a positive relationship between political interest and use of right-wing alternative media (Schulze, 2020), while another study found no significant relationship (Müller & Schulz, 2021). Tracking studies from Germany have also led to mixed conclusions (Müller & Bach, 2021). Regarding ideological orientation, evidence also points in different directions. Data from the Reuters Institute Digital News Report suggest that users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media ideologically lean to the left and right, respectively (Newman et al., 2018). Schulze (2020) found that immigration-critical attitudes, but not right-wing ideological orientation, related to use of right-wing alternative media. Similarly, other studies have found a positive relationship with populist vote casting and holding populist attitudes (Müller & Bach, 2021; Müller & Schulz, 2021), but not with ideological orientation or extremism measured as fringe ideological orientation (Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Schulz, 2021). This leads to the following research question:

RQ3. What is the relationship between alternative news use and 1) political interest, and 2) ideological orientation?

Parallel to alternative media’s criticism of mainstream media, using alternative media (and other non-mainstream news sources, such as political talk radio) is related to lower levels of trust in mainstream media (e.g., Andersen et al., 2021; Schulze, 2020; Tsfati & Capella, 2003). Low levels of trust in mainstream media have been assumed to lead to less consumption hereof (e.g., Tsfati & Capella, 2003), and the rise of alternative media has been accompanied by concerns that their users’ disenchantment with mainstream media might result in them turning their backs on mainstream news (Cushion, 2023). However, recent findings suggest that alternative media users in Germany and Sweden generally do not shy away from mainstream media, and some studies even find a positive association between alternative and mainstream news use (e.g., Andersen et al., 2021, 2022; Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Schulz, 2021). In her study, Schulze (2020) found that while alternative media use is related to lower levels of trust in legacy and public service news media, the users have higher levels of trust in tabloids. This gives reason to distinguish between these types of news media when assessing the relationship between alternative and mainstream news use, resulting in the final research question:

RQ4. What is the relationship between alternative news use and use of 1) public service, 2) national dailies, and 3) tabloid news?

While Müller and Schulz (2021) distinguished between occasional and frequent use of alternative media, most previous studies have focused only on the use of right-wing alternative media (Schulze, 2020) or treated alternative news users as one group (Andersen et al., 2021; Müller & Bach, 2021). Consequently, differences between users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media, and alternative media with different degrees of alternativeness, remain largely unexplored. As exceptions, Rauch (2019), in a re-analysis of US survey data from 2009, distinguished between Democrats and Republicans self-identifying as alternative media users and found differences in their criticism of mainstream media; and Theorin and Strömbäck (2020) investigated effects of exposure to one left-wing and one right-wing alternative media outlet on immigration perceptions and attitudes. However, neither of these studies investigated whether the users of different alternative media have different characteristics with respect to the variables outlined above. As a substantial contribution to the existing literature, this article distinguishes between left-wing, right-wing, and cross-cutting alternative news use as well as between use of alternative media with different degrees of alternativeness (see categorisation below).

Like in the other Nordic countries, the Danish media system is characterised by high levels of trust (Schrøder et al., 2018, 2021) and a strong tradition of public service media (Syvertsen et al., 2014) offering politically balanced news (Albæk et al., 2010, 2015). While the party-press waned during the twentieth century, national dailies still have ideological leanings, which, to some extent, are mirrored in their news coverage (Hjarvard, 2010). In other words, neutral as well as ideologically oriented news is already available in the mainstream media system. Setting Denmark apart from the other Nordic countries, the Danish public debate and parliamentary system are considered more open to extreme points of view, especially compared to Sweden (Heft et al., 2020). Over the past two decades, the immigration-critical Danish People’s Party has acted as a support party for different centre-right governments and has thus been treated as a legitimate political partner. Furthermore, public debate in mainstream media is considered open to immigration-critical points of view, creating what has been labelled a harsh tone in the immigration debate (Heft et al., 2020). In contrast, Swedish public debate was long considered to be less open to immigration-critical points of view (Heft et al., 2020), and the present centre-right government is the first Swedish government that collaborates with the (right-wing populist) Sweden Democrats. Altogether, these characteristics of the Danish media–political context make Denmark a least likely case for alternative media to find an audience, as also argued by Heft and colleagues (2020). This makes Denmark a particularly interesting context for studying the prevalence of alternative news use and what characterises the users.

Blach-Ørsten and Mayerhöffer (2021) have provided a broad overview of the alternative media landscape in Denmark, and they identify ten cases (three left-wing and seven right-wing) of what they term “hyperpartisan” alternative media. As I aim to investigate how widespread the use of alternative media is in Denmark, all these outlets were included in the survey. Additionally, two other right-wing outlets that were considered alternative media in previous studies (Brems, 2022, 2023) were included, resulting in a total of twelve alternative media (see Table 1). Thus, the survey aims to cover all relevant cases of Danish alternative media.

In a recent study, I explored the structure and content of the same twelve Danish alternative media and found considerable differences in the extent to which they adopt or deviate from a neutral journalistic style, how radical the ideological agendas are that they advocate, and the amount and vehemence of the explicit media and political criticism they voice (Brems, 2023). Though not providing a formal classification of the twelve outlets into different types, the results showed that three outlets consistently stood out from the rest: Den Korte Avis, Document, and NewSpeek. These outlets voiced the most severe explicit media criticism and radical distrust in politicians, deviated starkly from a neutral journalistic style, and advocated more radical right-wing ideological agendas, mirrored, for instance, in the use of degradation of particularly Muslim immigrants. The rest of the investigated outlets also advocated in favour of left-wing or right-wing agendas, for example, pro-climate or anti-immigration, but did so by way of, for example, giving high priority to these topics or using direct commentary. While varying in degree of deviation from a neutral journalistic style and media and political criticism, all these outlets refrained from use of degradation and severe or radical criticism of the media and political mainstream. Based on these insights, I distinguish between alternative media that have a high degree of alternativeness (the three formerly mentioned outlets) and alternative media that have a low/moderate degree of alternativeness (the rest of the outlets), summed up in Table 1. This notion of a higher degree of alternativeness should be understood as capturing the traits outlined above, that is, a more critical opposition to the media and political mainstream, greater distance from professional journalistic norms, and advocacy of more radical ideological agendas. Notably, all three outlets with a high degree of alternativeness are right-wing, while the other group contains both left-wing and right-wing outlets.

To answer the first research question regarding how widespread the use of alternative media is in Denmark, dummy variables for use/non-use of each alternative medium and an aggregative dummy variable for use/non-use across all twelve alternative media were used for presenting a descriptive overview.

To answer the second, third, and fourth research questions, a four-step multinomial logistic regression analysis was performed. In all four steps, the categorical variable for alternative news use was treated as the outcome variable. To avoid post-treatment bias, the independent variables were inserted into the regression model stepwise. In the first step, age and gender were used as the only predictors of alternative news use. In the second step, level of education and place of residence were added, and in the third step, political interest and ideological orientation were added. Finally, in the fourth step, the three indexes for mainstream news orientation were added. In each step, the variables from the former steps were used as controls (for similar stepwise approaches, see Hansen, 2021; Stubager et al., 2021). The variables for mainstream news use were included in a later step than ideological orientation and political interest because people with consistently conservative or liberal views have been found to orient more to political news than people with mixed ideological orientations (Mitchell et al., 2014), and political interest is an important determinant of news use (Lecheler & de Vreese, 2017; Strömbäck et al., 2013).

The results from the multinomial logistic regression analysis are presented in figures displaying the predicted average probability of alternative news use by each variable included in the analysis, controlled for the other variables included in the given step of the analysis. This approach has the advantage of allowing for direct interpretation of the results, independent of the reference category used. Moreover, presenting the results this way makes it possible to assess how small or great the predicted average probability of use is for different groups or across the spectrum of a continuous variable in absolute terms. For better graphical overview, the figures are displayed without CI error bars, but significant differences are commented on in text. Figures with CI error bars are available in Appendix E in the online supplement. For the categorical independent variables, pairwise significance tests were performed to test the differences in predicted average probability of alternative news use between groups; the results of these tests are available in Appendix C in the online supplement. Tables with regression results presented as relative risk ratios

In multinomial logistic regression analysis, the exponentiated logit coefficients are referred to as relative risk ratios rather than odds ratios (used in logistic regression analysis). The reason for this is that odds refer to the ratio of the probability of being in an outcome category divided by the probability of not being in the outcome category. However, in multinomial logistic regression analysis, there are more than two outcome categories. The probability of being in a specific outcome category is thus not compared to the probability of not being in the given outcome category but to the probability of being in another specific category on the outcome variable, that is, the selected base category (see Pampel, 2021: 95–98). In this study, odds would refer to belonging to a specific (non-)user group relative to belonging to any other (non-)user group, whereas the coefficients in the multinomial logistic regression analysis employed refer to belonging to a specific user group relative to belonging specifically to the non-user group (the selected base category).

To the best of my knowledge, this study is the first investigation of how prevalent the use of left-wing and right-wing alternative media is in Denmark, as well as what characterises their users. The findings suggest that use of alternative media is more widespread among the Danish population than previous studies have indicated (Blach-Ørsten & Mayerhöffer, 2021; Heft et al., 2020; Schrøder et al., 2018, 2021), with more than one in five reporting at least some use of alternative media, but that frequent use is less widespread. The findings indicate that use of right-wing alternative media is more prevalent in Denmark than use of their left-wing counterparts. This raises the interesting question for future exploration as to why there is apparently not only a greater supply of (e.g. Blach-Ørsten & Mayerhöffer, 2021; Brems, 2023), but also a greater demand for right-wing than left-wing alternative news content in the Danish media system.

It should be noted that the way in which alternative news use is tapped seems to influence the estimates of its prevalence (see the overview in Appendix A). In the German case, for instance, the measure employed by Schulze (2020) was a list of five alternative media and inquired about use during the past week, whereas Müller and Schulz (2021) used a list of twelve alternative media and included a response option of using alternative media “very rarely”. They arrived at estimates of 9 and 28 per cent users of alternative media in the German population, respectively. For this study, I inquired about days of use within the past week, but it is possible that some respondents have evaluated the question more holistically and indicated less frequent use by checking the response category of one day of exposure. Including twelve alternative media in the survey questionnaire has likely increased the estimated share of users. This does not necessarily mean that the estimate is inflated, however. Ceteris paribus, including a broad spectrum of outlets should give a better estimate of how widespread the use of alternative media is, especially since most users reported using only one alternative medium. This indicates that while most alternative media might have small user bases, collectively they can amount to a fair share of the population, speaking in favour of casting the net wide when estimating their prevalence. Future studies could qualify survey-based estimates with digital tracking, which can also capture the “long tail” of alternative news use.

The spread of alternative media has been accompanied by concerns over users falling prey to alternative media because they are incapable of telling alternative from mainstream content, extremity, and echo chambers (e.g., Cushion, 2023; Noppari et al., 2019; Schwarzenegger, 2021). Like recent scholarship (Andersen et al., 2021; Müller & Schulz, 2021; Noppari et al., 2019; Schulze, 2020; Schwarzenegger, 2021), this study adds considerable nuance to this picture of users and furthermore suggests that there is reason to temper such concerns, at least in the Danish case. While the parts of the population holding the lowest level of education are more likely to use alternative media than some higher-level education groups, the general picture is that all types of alternative media appeal across levels of education. Although this study does not include measures of media literacy, this suggests that the upsurge of alternative media cannot be written off as solely the result of less-educated parts of the population being unable to distinguish between alternative and mainstream media. The findings also show a strong association between alternative news use and high political interest, a trait normally considered a democratic asset.

Regarding concerns over extremity, the findings show that ideological orientation further towards the left and right ends of the spectrum is significantly associated with greater predicted average probability of using left-wing and right-wing alternative media, respectively. However, the findings also show that big jumps on the ideological spectrum are not associated with big differences in predicted probability of alternative news use in absolute terms, and the findings do not indicate that the users on average take extreme ideological positions. As such, the users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media are relatively more ideologically extreme than non-users, but cannot be characterised as extremists. This is in line with the previous finding that political extremity does not predict alternative news use (Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Schulz, 2021). Since ideological orientation was measured based on self-placement, it is, of course, possible that the users do not consider themselves extreme yet nonetheless hold more extreme policy attitudes than non-users, as found in previous studies (e.g., Schulze, 2020; Theorin & Strömbäck, 2020). Investigating this as well as any causal influence of alternative news use on policy attitudes are important paths to explore in future studies.

The findings also show that alternative news use is generally positively associated with being older and male, and that users are more likely to live in the most disadvantaged parts of the country, geographically far from the centre of power. Thereby, they share traits with Danish populist voters (Reinemann et al., 2016), and previous studies have found that alternative news use is associated with holding populist attitudes (Müller & Schulz, 2021) and lower political trust (Andersen et al., 2021). The findings could thus indicate that this is also the case in Denmark. The study finds no general urban–rural divide, though, suggesting that alternative news use is not associated with this new political cleavage (Hansen & Hjorth, 2021).

In response to concerns about filter bubbles and echo chambers commonly voiced in public debate (Cushion, 2023), this study corroborates previous findings (Andersen et al., 2021, 2022; Frischlich et al., 2022; Müller & Schulz, 2021) and shows that only a small fraction of users seek out no mainstream media at all and that the users are generally frequent users of mainstream media. The findings also show a general positive association with use of national dailies.

When the users seek out mainstream media despite their lower levels of trust in them (Andersen et al., 2021; Schulze, 2020) and the explicit media criticism voiced by alternative media (Brems, 2023; Figenschou & Ihlebæk, 2019), it begs the question why they continue to find mainstream media relevant. In the Danish case, this should likely be understood in the context of a less-developed alternative media ecology (Mayerhöffer, 2021) and more broadly in the Nordic context of a strong public service tradition (Syvertsen et al., 2014) and ideologically oriented mainstream news on offer (Hjarvard, 2010). Studies on populist citizens with hostile media attitudes and news sceptics have proposed that their use of mainstream news media might be explained by habitual news use, a need for staying oriented (and lack of alternatives for doing so), seeking confirmation that mainstream news is biased, or simply an urge to argue with the media (Schulz, 2019; Tsfati & Capella, 2005). Along the same lines, a qualitative interview study with Norwegian users of alternative media shows that they are particularly critical of mainstream coverage of specific contested topics such as immigration, but that they seek out mainstream news for orientation on topics such as traffic and local issues (Thorbjørnsrud & Figenschou, 2020). An important path for future research would be further exploring the users’ motivations for seeking out mainstream news and how they combine alternative and mainstream content.

Finally, it is noteworthy that while the findings in some cases show small differences between the users of different types of alternative media, the general picture is that different alternative media seem to attract similar audiences. Thus, although substantive differences can be found between alternative media with respect to the amount and severity of their media and political criticism, deviation from professional journalistic norms, and how radical the agendas are that they advocate (Brems, 2023), these differences cannot necessarily be transferred one-to-one to their users.