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Pandemic Populism: Facebook Pages of Alternative News Media and the Corona Crisis -- A Computational Content Analysis
Svenja Boberg, Thorsten Quandt, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt, Lena Frischlich
TL;DR
The study examines what German alternative news media posted on Facebook during the early COVID-19 crisis amid concerns about confusion and disinformation. Using computational content analysis of this output, it finds little obvious fabrication but a populist, anti-establishment framing that contributed to a contradictory and distrusting worldview.
Problem
Amid online conspiracy theories, misleading rumors, and disinformation, little was known about what alternative news media distributed during the crisis and whether their content supported fears about societal confusion.
Method
The study applies computational content analysis to Facebook activity from German alternative news media, using a dataset covering the early crisis and examining message structure, topics, actors, interactions, and fabricated news or conspiracy theories.
Results
Alternative news media did not notably spread obvious fabrications, but their posts mirrored mainstream topics while adopting an anti-establishment, emotionally charged populist tone and prominently featuring rumors and conspiracy theories.
Takeaways & Limitations
The coverage contributed to public confusion by constructing a contradictory, menacing, and distrusting worldview that called official statements into question.
Takeaways & Limitations
The analysis is limited to Germany, the initial pandemic phase, and Facebook activity from the country’s most relevant alternative news media; broader comparative data are needed to assess generality.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only had severe political, economic, and societal effects, it has also affected media and communication systems in unprecedented ways. While traditional journalistic media has tried to adapt to the rapidly evolving situation, alternative news media on the Internet have given the events their own ideological spin. Such voices have been criticized for furthering societal confusion and spreading potentially dangerous "fake news" or conspiracy theories via social media and other online channels. The current study analyzes the factual basis of such fears in an initial computational content analysis of alternative news media's output on Facebook during the early Corona crisis, based on a large German data set from January to the second half of March 2020. Using computational content analysis, methods, reach, interactions, actors, and topics of the messages were examined, as well as the use of fabricated news and conspiracy theories. The analysis revealed that the alternative news media stay true to message patterns and ideological foundations identified in prior research. While they do not spread obvious lies, they are predominantly sharing overly critical, even anti-systemic messages, opposing the view of the mainstream news media and the political establishment. With this pandemic populism, they contribute to a contradictory, menacing, and distrusting worldview, as portrayed in detail in this analysis.
1 Introduction: Corona Crisis, Disinformation, and Pandemic Populism
The early Corona crisis generated widespread online conspiracy theories, rumors, disinformation, and false recommendations, while alternative news media were suspected of amplifying them for political reasons. This study addresses the unclear empirical contribution of these outlets by computationally analyzing their German Facebook activity during the pandemic’s initial phase.
- Crisis and disinformation: Online platforms circulated conspiracy theories, misleading rumors, disinformation, and scientifically unfounded claims about COVID-19’s causes and cures.Such content was associated with confusion and risky behavior among people following misleading recommendations.
- Alternative news media: Alternative news media positioned themselves as counter-forces to traditional outlets and were suspected of spreading politically motivated, misleading information.Their self-described oppositional and populist perspectives formed part of the concern.
- Research gap: The actual contribution of alternative news media to public confusion remained unclear, partly because influential channels were difficult to analyze without adequate API access.In Germany, Twitter had relatively limited daily reach compared with other channels.
- Study focus: The working paper analyzes Facebook pages of German alternative news media during the early crisis, covering the period through March 22, 2020.The study is limited to Germany and the initial pandemic phase, with later work planned on mainstream media and longer periods.
- Study aims: The study aims to provide empirical data on Germany’s Corona debate and identify potentially generalizable patterns of pandemic populism.It seeks to move beyond speculation about which actors contribute to risky public debate.
2 Alternative News Media
Alternative news media present themselves as corrective voices to mainstream journalism through distinct networks, routines, topics, sources, and epistemologies. In Germany, many successful outlets show populist affinities, while concerns about disinformation coexist with relatively low but occasionally substantial audience exposure.
- Media environment: Digital media have enabled alternative information channels to flourish amid weaker authoritative control over information flows and declining trust in representative institutions.This development supports a growing ecosystem of alternative news media.
- Concept and practices: Alternative news media position themselves as corrective voices to traditional or mainstream news media.They stage this alternativeness through networks, production routines, marginalized voices, alternative topics, and diverging epistemologies.
- Populism: German alternative news media brands are unified by an affinity to populism understood as a communication style combining people-centered and anti-elitist assumptions.The cited theoretical framing treats populism as both content and style.
- Disinformation concerns: Alternative news media have been accused of spreading conspiracy theories, bending facts, and advancing ideological agendas, although not all of their content is directly false.These concerns motivate examining their actual crisis-related messages rather than assuming widespread fabrication.
- Audience reach: Only 7% of US citizens had used Breitbart in the previous week despite 44% knowing the outlet, while exposure figures for Germany and other countries were lower.The passage characterizes active consumption as relatively low in most Western democracies.
3 Research Interest and Research Questions
The study examines German alternative news media’s Facebook coverage during the early Corona crisis to replace speculation about their societal role with evidence about their messages. It asks about reach, interactions, topics, actors, and fact-checked fake news or conspiracy theories.
- Research interest: The study applies computational content analysis to characterize the message structure of alternative news media during the Corona crisis.The stated motivation is to examine distributed content before making claims about possible effects.
- Research questions: RQ1a asks how broad the reach of alternative news media’s Corona coverage is on Facebook.
- Research questions: RQ1b asks how many interactions the Facebook coverage evokes.
- Research questions: RQ2 asks which topics are central to alternative news media’s coverage of the Corona crisis.
- Research questions: RQ3 asks which actors are most prominent in the coverage.
- Research questions: RQ4 asks whether the messages include fake news or conspiracy theories identified by fact-checking entities.A subsequent working paper will analyze traditional news media using the same questions for comparison.
4 Method
The study crawled German alternative news media on Facebook from January 7 to March 22, 2020, and analyzed reach, interactions, textual structure, topics, actors, and fact-checked false content. Its sample was built from identified media sites and filtered Corona-related posts, with manual and computational procedures supporting the analyses.
- Sample and data: The observation period ran from January 7 through March 22, 2020, covering the early Corona crisis in Germany.
- Sample and data: 71 alternative news media sites were identified, 40 had Facebook pages, and 32 active pages were crawled.Some included outlets operated from Austria or Switzerland but covered issues relevant to Germany.
- Sample and data: 116,994 Facebook posts were collected, including 15,207 from alternative news media and 282 from fact-checking sites.The dataset also included timestamps, page likes, engagement metrics, and linked-URL information.
- Measures: Reach was measured using page likes, while likes, shares, comments, and reactions were summed without weighting into total interactions.
- Text processing: Text preprocessing removed markup, URLs, mentions, hashtags, punctuation, and stopwords, then standardized annotated named entities manually.
- Analytical approach: Inductive topic modeling and co-occurrence analysis were used to identify thematic structure and contextualize prominent actors.Co-occurrences counted pairs of words appearing in the same post and focused on the 20 most frequent named entities.
- Analytical approach: Fact-checked Corona-related posts were reviewed to identify conspiracy theories and fake news, using a narrowly defined category of false and fabricated news items.The procedure linked stories to concrete persons or specific keywords and did not infer intentionality from content alone.
5.1 Reach and Total Interactions
Mainstream news media dominated Facebook coverage of the Corona crisis in output, potential reach, and total engagement, while alternative outlets followed the same temporal growth pattern. Yet alternative pages’ average interactions per post were relatively close to mainstream pages, and they contributed 11.27% of the most frequently shared posts.
- Output over time: Mainstream media produced substantially more Corona-related posts overall and per page, with coverage spikes around Germany’s first reported infection and Lombardy’s lockdown.Alternative outlets followed the same growth pattern, although their overall output was much lower.
- Potential reach: More than ten times as many page likes gave mainstream media a much higher potential reach than alternative outlets.The comparison is partly explained by the larger number of mainstream outlets in the sample.
- Interactions: Mainstream media generated more total interactions, but alternative outlets averaged only 25% fewer interactions per post.The difference was statistically significant: t(20495) = -3.93, p < .001.
- High-performing posts: 11.27% of the top 1% most frequently shared posts came from alternative outlets, compared with 4.9% of the top 1% by total interactions.The alternative posts in the top interaction group came from RT Deutsch, Junge Freiheit, or Compact-Magazin.
- Overall comparison: Overall, mainstream media dominated Facebook’s information environment, but the per-post interaction gap was smaller than the potential-reach gap.The authors relate the broader mainstream advantage to differences in production resources and staffing.
5.2 Topics
The eleven-topic analysis shows that alternative news media combined factual pandemic coverage with system-critical, anti-establishment, anti-migration, conspiracy-oriented, clickbait, and attention-seeking narratives. Topic prominence and framing shifted with major pandemic events, while regular weekend declines persisted.
- Topic composition: The eleven topics included factual reporting, criticism of authorities and economic policy, fear and panic narratives, societal cohesion, anti-migration framing, clickbait, and unrelated Corona buzzwords.Topic 1 primarily covered infections, deaths, quarantine, and curfews, whereas other topics reflected alternative media’s heterodox and right-wing positions.
- Topic composition: Topic 10 used the crisis for emotionalized soft news and clickbait, while Topic 11 used Corona-related language to attract attention to otherwise unrelated products, services, or articles.Topic 11 differed from clickbait with a weaker topical connection to the crisis and a primarily promotional function.
- Topic composition: Alternative news media adapted familiar populist, anti-systemic, and anti-establishment narratives to the pandemic, including criticism of migration and climate activism.The overall topic structure remained consistent with pre-existing ideological patterns rather than forming an entirely new crisis-specific worldview.
- Development over time: Topic attention increased after the first German infection on January 28, initially centering on infection numbers and government preparedness.Coverage remained limited after the initial push while the outbreak appeared contained.
- Development over time: The late-February Lombardy outbreak and German risk-area designations produced a news burst that intensified criticism of government measures, crisis management, fear, clickbait, and promotional uses of Corona.These events changed both output volume and topic composition.
- Development over time: Weekend declines remained pronounced throughout the observation period, indicating that ordinary production routines persisted despite unprecedented crisis coverage.The pattern also appeared in mainstream news media, although the authors caution that early and per-topic findings rely on limited message counts.
5.3 Actors
Alternative news media prominently featured political actors, especially German crisis decision-makers, while also sustaining pre-existing populist narratives. Co-occurrence patterns further connected these actors to national topics, systemic criticism, migration, and climate activism.
- Top-ranked actors: Angela Merkel, the federal government, and Jens Spahn were the most frequently named actors, with Donald Trump ranking fourth.
- Top-ranked actors: Wodarg and Drosten were portrayed as antagonists representing heterodox criticism versus mainstream scientific expertise.
- Top-ranked actors: Macron, Kurz, and Erdoğan linked Corona coverage to neighboring countries and the established anti-migration narrative.
- Top-ranked actors: Greta Thunberg’s frequent appearance extended pre-existing criticism of climate activism into Corona coverage, including parallels between “Corona panic” and “climate panic.”
- Top-ranked actors: The AfD ranked sixth among named actors, ahead of the SPD, reflecting the right-wing populist orientation of many alternative news outlets rather than crisis activity alone.
- Co-occurrence analysis: Co-occurrences centered Merkel, the government, Spahn, and the CDU within a network of domestic crisis topics, systemic criticism, migration, and climate activism.
5.4 Fake news and conspiracy theories
The analysis found few explicit fake-news posts but identified several conspiracy narratives, especially claims about the virus’s laboratory origin and the government’s alleged prior planning. These messages were a small share of the dataset overall, yet some gained substantial secondary circulation and interaction.
- Only three messages contained an explicit fake-news item, concerning a claim that ibuprofen significantly worsens COVID-19.
- Three major conspiracy theories involved a misleading government risk-analysis narrative, laboratory-origin claims, and Wolfgang Wodarg’s minimization of COVID-19 risks.
- The laboratory-origin theory was the most widespread and included claims that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately designed in Wuhan or connected to broader conspiracy networks.
- Disinformation- and conspiracy-linked posts represented 1.1% of both the overall dataset and total interactions.
- Secondary redistribution substantially amplified some narratives, with one risk-analysis story exceeding 15,000 interactions and potentially reaching over 2.5 million Facebook users.
6 Conclusion
The analysis finds no notable amount of fact-checker-identified fake news, but alternative news media still contribute to confusion through anti-establishment framing, rumors, and conspiracy theories. Their indirect amplification and limited empirical scope qualify the conclusions while informing debate about censorship and open democratic discussion.
- Motivation: Public fears prompted scrutiny of whether alternative news media spread rumors or lies that could dangerously misinform citizens during the crisis.The authors note that some proposed legal restrictions may be unwarranted or counterproductive based on their preliminary analysis.
- Findings: The analysis found no notable amount of fact-checker-identified fake news, indicating that these outlets were not major spreaders of outright fabrications during the study period.The conclusion distinguishes the absence of obvious lies from other forms of problematic communication.
- Findings: Although most posts mirrored mainstream media in topics and actors, their tone was anti-establishment, emotionally charged, and critical of politicians, public institutions, and mainstream media.Alternative outlets reframed COVID-19 information to fit established narratives concerning politicians, refugees, immigration, and climate-change conspiracies.
- Findings: Rumors and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 origins generated notable interactions while aligning with anti-climate, anti-vaccination, and anti-foreigner narratives.The authors characterize this combination as pandemic populism rather than simple dissemination of open lies.
- Findings: Alternative news media may contribute indirectly by having their coverage shared elsewhere, including conspiracy theorists’ YouTube channels that amplify them as supposedly truthful critical sources.This secondary distribution system extends the reach of their messages beyond the original Facebook pages.
- Implications and limitations: The study concludes that framing strategies construct a contradictory, menacing, and distrusting worldview that calls official statements into question, but its evidence is limited to Germany, Facebook, and the pandemic’s initial phase.Comparative data from other countries, platforms, and longer periods would help assess whether the inferred principles generalize.