Populistisch und verschwörungstheoretisch? : Die Darstellung der Covid-19-Pandemie in rechtsalternativen Online-Medien

Abstract Since the rise of right-wing populist movements and parties, right-wing populist ideas have become part of the public media discourse. However, we know little about the explicit use of populism and conspiracy theories in right-wing alternative online media. Right-wing alternative online media may refer to populist and conspiracy theory elements in their reporting for several reasons: First, alternative online media often openly present their political orientation on their websites. Second, these media see themselves as a corrective to the political and media mainstream, which implies that populist core criteria are part of their self-image. Third, populist-minded individuals and those with stronger conspiracy beliefs are more likely to use alternative online media. Findings about populist and conspiracy-theoretical content allow us to make assumptions about, for example, the emergence or reinforcement of (1) existing populist or conspiracy-theoretical attitudes among recipients or (2) refusal to support political measures, e.g., refusal to vaccinate in the Covid-19 pandemic. We define right-wing alternative online media as outlets that perceive themselves as corrective and opposed to established media in a media system. In contrast to earlier left-wing alternative media, contemporary right-wing alternative media see themselves as digital news providers with at least rudimentary forms of institutionalized journalism. Our study focuses on the content dimension and analyzes populism and conspiracy theories in articles published by right-wing alternative online media. We understand populism as a “thin ideology”. Its conceptual core is the positive reference to the “homogeneous people” (empty populism) that can be distinguished from elites (anti-elitist populism) or other social groups (exclusionary populism), or both (complete populism). This opposition between the people and the elite can be explained psychologically with Social Identity Theory. Previous empirical research has content-analyzed populism as an ideology and/or rhetorical style. Few studies have explicitly linked populism to right-wing alternative media content. Based on theoretical and empirical reasoning, we expect anti-elitist populism to be the most common form of populism in right-wing alternative media content, followed by complete and exclusionary populism. Empty populism is assumed to be the least common form. However, right-wing alternative online media content does not form a homogeneous media type since they differ in the political tendencies of topic structures, reporting style, and degree of incivility. Therefore, we ask about differences in the extent of the four forms of populism among more conventional, unconventional, or even openly right alternative online media. Furthermore, we distinguish theories about conspiracies from conspiracy theories. Theories about conspiracies are not necessarily illegitimate in democratic discourse, whereas conspiracy theories violate fundamental norms of democratic discourse. Conspiracy theories (1) ascribe power to a single group of people who deliberately and secretly control events, (2) construct an essentialist binary of truth and falsehood, of good and evil (Manichean dualism), and (3) systematically degrade processes of epistemological validation by conventional institutions such as the media or the judiciary (elusive epistemology). We argue that populism as an ideology is compatible with the three core criteria of conspiracy theories. Empirically, there is no clear evidence of the occurrence of conspiracy theories in right-wing alternative online media. Therefore, we examine how often right-wing alternative online media use conspiracy elements and compare the extent between different right-wing alternative online media types. We conducted a manual standardized content analysis of 202 randomly selected articles about the Covid-19 pandemic between 27 January 2020 and 23 August 2021. The pandemic context lends itself to a crisis of global magnitude. The attribution of responsibility in social crises is an expression of power critique common in populism and conspiracy theories. We choose three conventional right-wing alternative media ( Compact, Zuerst!, Junge Freiheit ) and three rather unconventional or open right-wing media ( Journalistenwatch, PI News, Politikstube ) in Germany. The units of analysis of the content categories are the target actors in an article. Target objects include any person, group, or institution in an article. Based on our conceptualization of populism, we condense the coded persons, groups, or institutions into three actor groups: elite, outgroups, and people. Each target actor could be evaluated positively or negatively. A total of 537 target actors occurred. Our study operationalizes conspiracy theories based on the theoretically elaborated core elements and links them to the target actors. The first category captures conspiracy-theoretical acts of target actors with the following characteristics: (1) destruction of the (world) economy, (2) exchange of the German population with other outgroups, (3) decimation of the (world) population, (4) establishment of a new system of rule, and (5) no conspiracy act discernible. Other categories capture whether an act is represented as secret or not, whether it is described as legal or illegal, and whether a target actor benefits from it. Only one-sixth of the articles contain one of the four forms of populism. Anti-elitist populism is the most common form, whereas empty populism, complete populism, and exclusionary populism hardly occur in the sample. The comparison between different media types reveals hardly any differences in the frequency of populism forms at the article and actor levels. However, we find significant differences between conventional and unconventional right-wing alternative media in evaluating elites and outgroups. Overall, anti-elitist populism plays a role in right-wing alternative online media, while conspiracy-theoretical content hardly occurs during the Covid-19 pandemic.