About the project
At present, traditional mainstream media are losing ground while alternative media emerge and affect politics globally, often attacking traditional media as biased. Mainstream media have started to respond to these attacks in different ways. To outline this interplay between new and established media is the aim of our international research project.
It deals with media criticism as visible in alternative media online in Sweden, Germany and France and the various responses of traditional media, politics and society. Skepticism towards mainstream media is vociferously argued and claims that these conceal or distort information that does not fit the 'politically correct' agenda and that media discourse is constrained due to taboos upheld by journalists and societal elites.
Our goals are to investigate strategies and effects of media criticism by:
- Studying texts about media in the most important alternative media
- Interviewing people who are active contributors to these publications about their perception of mainstream media and their view of participation in democratic society.
On the mainstream media side we will investigate how the growing political influence of these alternative media has led to changes in discourse and strategy. The project is interdisciplinary and international, exploring a question mainly related to political communication employing perspectives and competence from computer science and intermediality.
