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Do alternative media users distrust all mainstream news or only some? Assessing Danish left-wing and right-wing alternative media users’ trust in news at the outlet-specific level Cover

Do alternative media users distrust all mainstream news or only some? Assessing Danish left-wing and right-wing alternative media users’ trust in news at the outlet-specific level

Open Access
|Feb 2026

Abstract

In this article, I investigate Danish alternative media users’ trust in mainstream news at the outlet-specific level. Drawing on an online survey representative of the adult Danish population (N = 1,518), the study distinguishes between users of left-wing and right-wing alternative media and reveals a remarkable difference: The former only have lower trust in (purportedly) right-leaning mainstream media whereas the latter have lower trust in mainstream media regardless of their ideological leanings, indicating more all-encompassing lower trust. While the users have relatively lower news trust than the rest of the population, their trust is still fairly high in absolute terms. I conclude with a discussion of potential explanations for the left/right difference and of the democratic implications of the findings in and beyond the Danish media context.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2026-0002 | Journal eISSN: 2001-5119 | Journal ISSN: 1403-1108
Language: English
Page range: 20 - 51
Published on: Feb 9, 2026
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2026 Miriam Kroman Brems, published by University of Gothenburg Nordicom
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.