At first glance, alternative online news media seem to be fundamentally different from traditional mass media - in tone, in their journalistic quality and in their political agenda. In their latest study, "Between Journalistic and Movement Logic: Disentangling Referencing Practices of Right-Wing Alternative Online News Media", Eva Mayerhöffer (Roskilde University) and Annett Heft (Freie Universität Berlin and Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society) investigate the extent to which alternative right-wing online news media follow a journalistic logic in their referencing practices, i.e. using in-text citations and hyperlinked references to establish facticity and provide background information, and what role movement logics play in which references are used for partisan reasons.

The study shows how right-wing alternative online news media on the one hand try to distance themselves from established media and their logics, but in practice use them in large numbers as welcome legitimising sources. The interplay of both logics of dealing with sources points to "the hybrid nature of alternative news media situated at the boundary between journalism and political activism". The study, published in Digital Journalism, can be found here.