Who are the users of Danish alternative media? A survey study on the prevalence of alternative news use in Denmark and profiles of the users

	Left-wing	Right-wing
High degree of alternativeness		Den Korte Avis Document NewSpeek
Low or moderate degree of alternativeness	Konfront Netavisen Pio Solidaritet	180Grader 24NYT ditOverblik Folkets Avis Indblik Kontrast

[i] Comments: Folkets Avis and Konfront were not included in the content analysis in Brems, 2023. In this study, they are grouped together with the alternative media with a low or moderate degree of alternativeness. If the respondents who were coded as users of alternative media based on use of Folkets Avis and Konfront are dropped from the analysis (n = 39), this makes no substantial differences to the results.

[ii] Source: based on findings from Brems, 2023

Estimated use of alternative media among the adult Danish population (per cent)
**Comments:** N = 2,455. Data weighted to match the adult Danish population on age, gender, level of education, and place of residence.

TABLE 2

Use of different types of alternative media

Category	% (weighted)	n
Use no alternative media	76.6	1,867
Use left-wing alternative media, low/moderate alternativeness	3.2	81
Use right-wing alternative media, low/moderate alternativeness	7.6	195
Use left-wing and right-wing alternative media, low/moderate alter-nativeness	1.5	38
Use right-wing alternative media, high alternativeness	8.2	208
Use left-wing and right-wing alternative media, high alternativeness	2.9	66
Total	100	2,455

[i] Comments: No left-wing alternative media were classified as characterised by a high degree of alternativeness. Therefore, there is no user category for use of left-wing alternative media with a high degree of alternativeness.

Predicted average probability of alternative news use, by gender and age (per cent)
**Comments:** N = 2,455. McFadden’s pseudo-R2 = 0.028; Nagelkerke’s pseudo-R2 = 0.059. Variables included in the model: gender and age. CI error bars omitted for better graphical overview (for graphs with error bars see Appendix E in the online supplement).

Predicted average probability of alternative news use by level of education and place of residence (per cent)
**Comments:** N = 2,455. McFadden’s pseudo-R2 = 0.035; Nagelkerke’s pseudo-R2 = 0.072. Variables included in the model: gender, age, level of education, and place of residence. CI error bars omitted for better graphical overview (for graphs with error bars, see Appendix E in the online supplement).

Predicted average probability of alternative news use by political interest (per cent)
**Comments:** N = 2,118. McFadden’s pseudo-R2 = 0.066; Nagelkerke’s pseudo-R2 = 0.135. Variables included in the model: gender, age, level of education, place of residence, ideological orientation, and political interest. Results for “do not wish to answer” not displayed in figure (n = 22). CI error bars omitted for better graphical overview (for graphs with error bars, see Appendix E in the online supplement).

Predicted average probability of alternative news use by ideological orientation
**Comments:** N = 2,118. McFadden’s pseudo-R2 = 0.066; Nagelkerke’s pseudo-R2 = 0.135. Variables in the model: gender, age, level of education, place of residence, political interest, and ideological orientation (0 = left; 10 = right). Vertical lines indicate lower and upper quartiles. CI error bars omitted for better graphical overview (for graphs with error bars, see Appendix E in the online supplement).

Predicted average probability of alternative news use by mainstream news orientation
**Comments:** N = 2,118. McFadden’s pseudo-R2 = 0.102; Nagelkerke’s pseudo-R2 = 0.202. Variables included in the model: gender, age, level of education, place of residence, political interest, ideological orientation, public service orientation, national dailies orientation, tabloid orientation. Vertical lines indicate lower and upper quartiles. CI error bars omitted for better graphical overview (for graphs with error bars, see Appendix E in the online supplement).

TABLE A1

Measurements of alternative media use in previous studies

Study	Method	Item(s) and/or number of outlets included	Country	Estimated share of population using alternative media
Andersen et al., 2021	Survey self-report	“How often do you use online news websites or social media to follow…‘News about societal issues not reported by the traditional media’; ‘News that provide an alternative view on societal issues than traditional media’ [italics original]?” “How often do you use online news websites or social media to follow news that provide an alternative view than the traditional media on the following topics?” ‘News about crime’; ‘News about the climate and environment’; ‘News about integration and immigration’ [italics original]”. Scale: never (1), more rarely (2), once a month (3), once a week (4), several times a week (5), daily (6)	Sweden	Across four survey waves, approximately 16% report using alternative media once a week or more often.
Frischlich et al., 2022	Survey self-report	“In recent years, numerous news websites have emerged that often disseminate their content via social media and present themselves as an alternative to the established or ‘mainstream’ media. Which of the following alternative news media, if any, have you used to access news in the past week?” List of six alternative media provided and a category of “other” alternative news.	Germany	12%
Müller & Bach, 2021	Digital tracking (2.5 months in 2017; 1 month in 2019)	137 online news sites defined as populist alternative news media. Use defined as at least one visit to the page in the observation periods.	Germany	16.5% (2017) 7.4% (2019)
Müller & Schulz, 2021	Survey self-report	List-frequency technique including 12 alternative media with affinity for populism. Respondents were asked whether they knew the outlets and if so, how often they used them. Scale: never (0) to very frequently (5)	Germany	Total share of users (use at least one outlet at least “very rarely”): 28.1% Occasional users (use at least one outlet “very rarely” but none “frequently” or “very frequently”): 12.6% Frequent users (use at least one outlet “frequently” or “very frequently”): 15.5%
Schulze, 2020	Survey self-report (secondary analysis of 2019 Reuters Institute Digital News Report data)	“In recent years a number of online news sites have emerged with their content often distributed via social media. Which, if any, of the following have you heard of/used in the last week?” (Item quoted from Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019: 24–25). Four to seven alternative media included in each country.	Austria Finland Germany Sweden	Use at least one of the listed outlets during the last week: Austria: 8% Finland: 7% Germany: 9% Sweden: 22%
Steppat et al., 2021	Survey self-report	“Some people are disappointed by political news coverage and have the feeling that the (most frequently used) mainstream media sources do not report information fully. As a result, these people seek out alternative sources of information (e.g. they may seek out sources on the Internet where they can find their opinion better represented or can cross-check information). Do you belong to this group?” Scale: no, not at all (1), no, mostly not (2), yes, mostly (3), yes, definitely (4) Respondents who answered 3 or 4 were asked to specify up to three alternative media in an open-ended question. Coded into media categories by the study’s authors, one of which was self-proclaimed alternative media matching the definition in Holt et al., 2019.	Denmark Switzerland Italy Poland US	Respondents who consider themselves alternative media users and seek out self-proclaimed alternative media, according to the study’s authors’ coding: Denmark: 16% Switzerland: 15% Italy: 11% Poland: 12% US: 19%
Theorin & Strömbäck, 2020	Survey self-report	“In general, how often do you visit the following news sites on the Internet?” List included one right-wing and one left-wing alternative news medium. Scale: daily (6), 5–6 days a week (5), 3–4 days a week (4), 1–2 days a week (3), more seldom (2), and never (1)	Sweden	Left-wing outlet: At least one day a week: 6% More seldom: 9% Right-wing outlet: At least one day a week: 5% More seldom: 10%

TABLE B1

Sociodemographic variables in the analysis weighted and unweighted

Variable		Weighted (%)	Unweighted (%)	n
Gender	Female	50.6	52.3	1,283
Male	49.4	47.7	1,172
Age	18–29	17.8	13.9	342
	30–39	15.8	13.9	342
	40–49	14.5	14.8	363
50–59	20.1	21.5	527
60+	31.8	35.9	881
Level of education	Lower secondary	12.7	12.5	306
	General upper secondary	11.8	10.5	257
	Vocational	43.7	44.2	1,084
Short-cycle tertiary	5.8	6.1	149
Medium-cycle tertiary	16.6	17.4	426
Long-cycle tertiary	9.4	9.5	233
Residence	Outer municipalities	6.3	6.4	158
Residence	Rural municipalities	25.1	26.2	644
Middle-range municipalities	16.5	17.1	419
City municipalities	52.1	50.3	1,234

[i] Comments: N = 2,455. The education category “vocational” includes the technically and commercially oriented upper secondary educations (in Danish, HTX and HHX). In the survey, the small islands of Fanø, Læsø, Langeland, Samsø, and Ærø were collapsed into one response category for the municipality question. Respondents ticking this category were coded as outer municipalities, as four of the five islands belong to this category in Kristensen et al., 2007.

TABLE B2

Other variables in the analysis

Variable	Mean	Standard deviation	Minimum value	Maximum value	n
Political interest	2.78	.85	1	4	2,433
Ideological orientation	5.31	2.58	0	10	2,118
Public service orientation	4.52	2.24	0	7	2,455
National dailies orientation	.93	1.39	0	7	2,455
Tabloid orientation	2.30	2.46	0	7	2,455

[i] Comments: In the analysis, political interest is treated as a categorical variable and “do not wish to answer” included as a separate category (n = 22).

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2024-0014 | Journal eISSN: 2001-5119 | Journal ISSN: 1403-1108

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Language: English

Page range: 81 - 113

Published on: Mar 21, 2024

Published by: University of Gothenburg Nordicom

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

left-wing and right-wing alternative media,

alternative news users,

partisan media,

degrees of alternativeness,

Danish media system

Related subjects:

Social sciences,

Communication science,

Mass communication,

Public and political communication

© 2024 Miriam Kroman Brems, published by University of Gothenburg Nordicom
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Volume 45 (2024): Issue 1 (January 2024)

Who are the users of Danish alternative media? A survey study on the prevalence of alternative news use in Denmark and profiles of the users

Figures & Tables

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TABLE 2

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TABLE A1

TABLE B1

TABLE B2

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