On February 11, 2024, the final version of the article titled "Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics," authored by Annett Heft (Freie Universität Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute), Tim Ramsland, and Eva Mayerhöffer (both Roskilde University), was published by Taylor & Francis.

The article investigates how right-wing alternative news media, in their pursuit of both journalistic legitimacy and partisan credibility, impact source and topical diversity as well as content balance. Analyzing a dataset of 1000 randomly chosen articles from 20 right-wing alternative online news sources spanning six countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden) during the period from March 2019 to February 2020 (pre-COVID-19), the findings reveal a broad coverage of topics across most outlets. Specifically, US and UK media exhibit a primary focus on politics and policy, while Scandinavian counterparts lean more towards societal issues and crime coverage. The overall landscape of right-wing alternative news content is characterized by a mix of partisan and non-partisan sources. Notably, pivotal partisan areas like politics and mass media tend to feature more right-wing sources. Evaluation patterns indicate a positive bias towards right-wing sources concerning these topics, with a corresponding negative assessment of left-wing sources. Additionally, there is a tendency for right-wing and non-right-wing sources to be presented in separate articles rather than engaging in direct confrontation.

The full paper is available as an open-access publication. The paper, “Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics” was published in the journal Journalism Studies and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2294362