DemoRESILdigital research on the COVID-19 pandemic Part I: Pandemic Populism

Svenja Boberg, Thorsten Quandt, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt and Lena Frischlich published the white paper “Pandemic Populism: Facebook Pages of Alternative News Media and the Corona Crisis – a Computational Content Analysis” on the platform arxiv.org. The study analyzes the spreading of disinformation and conspiracy theories in an initial computational content analysis of alternative news media’s output on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic , 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. Reviews of the study can be read here.