Beyond the MSM: Understanding the rise of alternative online political media

After the British public voted to leave the EU, Donald Trump's Presidential victory and Jeremy Corbyn's rising support during the 2017 UK election campaign, the mainstream media (MSM) were criticised for not anticipating these events. They were accused of not reflecting or understanding many people's alienation from and anger with the mainstream media and political establishment. On both sides of the political spectrum, the acronym MSM has become a widely used pejorative term to characterise a broad range of legacy media that represents the establishment, protecting the interests of elites and perpetuating the political status quo.
It is in this context that many voters went beyond the MSM during the 2017 UK general election campaign and turned to what have been labelled alt-left media sites, where more pro-Labour and anti-MSM messages were being conveyed. This included sites such as The Canary, Evolve Politics, Wings over Scotland, Novara Media, Skwawkbox and Another Angry Voice. They became a prominent part of the campaign because they reached voters across many social media platforms, particularly Facebook, and bypassed the reliance on MSM for news. One study found that while established MSM brands dominated traffic on websites during the 2017 election campaign, in "coverage widely shared on Facebook, the picture is vastly different. Online native news sites like The Canary and even blogs like Another Angry Voice were able to achieve larger audiences than many strong print and TV news brands" (Littunen 2017). The rise of new alterative left media were credited with not just helping Jeremy Corbyn's Labour secure more votes amongst young people, but challenging the MSM's agenda setting power, including diminishing the editorial power of right wing newspapers, which far outnumber left-leaning titles.
Since they rose to prominence during the 2017 UK election campaign, there has been no systematic research examining the content of these sites, the editorial motivation behind them or how people understand and engage with them. The aim of this research project is to understand the production, content and consumption of both left- and right-wing alternative online political media, such as Westmonster, Breitbart UK, Conservative Woman and Guido Fawkes. We are also interested in exploring people's views about the MSM and whether they are turning to alternative media because of a perceived bias in political coverage.
We will examine the production, content and users of alternative media by carrying out a comprehensive analysis of selected sites and their use of twitter between 2016 and 2021, conducting approximately 50 interviews with both the editors and contributors, as well as with between 75-100 regular users. We will also use Twitter sentiment tools to examine how topics such as the MSM and BBC are understood by audiences. We have already established access with many alternative media sites and regular users of them (see supporting letters).
By closely analysing alternative online media over a five year period, we aim to understand the themes and issues addressed ahead of the next UK general election in 2022. This timetable has been developed to maximise societal and policy impact. Five impact events have been planned to reach key stakeholders. This includes a symposium for senior media figures to reflect on our findings and consider the implications for how MSM report politics ahead of the 2022 general election. A Westminster event and fringe talks at Labour and Conservative party conferences will be organised, which will engage policy makers, politicians and journalists. Private briefings will be held with media regulators to discuss the editorial standards of alternative online political media sites and to consider the policy implications (see supporting letter and user review). Finally, an academic conference will bring together alternative media scholars, particularly PGR students, to encourage more research.

Four dissemination events throughout the project will be organised:

1. In March 2021, a one day symposium in central London entitled 'Lessons for the MSM: Reflections on the rise of alternative online political media' will be held with senior journalists and editors from mainstream media invited. The symposium will allow us to reflect on our key findings to date, with a particular emphasis on the challenges mainstream media face from alternative online political media in how they present politics and engage with people. Since the media play a central role in informing and engaging people during election campaigns, the event will have an important impact on the health of UK democracy. We will encourage journalistic self-reflection and editorial rethinking of political coverage, which we will monitor, evidence and quantify at the end of the project. Rather than ignoring the world of alternative media, broadcasters will review the evidence of our research and engage with it across various editorial formats and platforms.

2. In July 2021, we will launch the findings of our study at a Westminster event in July 2021 before Parliament dissolves for summer recess, engaging with key stakeholders, such as politicians, policy makers and journalists. Before and after the event in Westminster, we will aim to make interventions into specific policy debates about regulating media in the digital age. By the end of the project, we would expect our research to have informed policy debates, with references to our blogs, presentations and academic outputs in Parliamentary reports and briefing papers. The rise of alternative media, for example, has also been associated with fake news. MPs launched an inquiry into fake news in January 2017 (but it finished prematurely due to the snap election in June). Our findings would be able to assess whether it was fair to label alternative media fake news outlets, and would answer questions the inquiry posed (but did not comprehensively answer).

3. Throughout 2020 and 2021, we will present our research findings to media regulators, including Impress and Ofcom. As the CfS indicates, several alt-left sites have signed up as members of Impress, which is an independent press regulator. Given its remit is to maintain editorial standards in journalism, including the accuracy of news, our findings will be relevant to their regulatory needs. We have a supporting letter from Impress, which includes an agreement to meet to discuss the policy ramifications of our research for regulating alternative online media. We will also engage with Ofcom, the UK's main regulator, during the project. Ofcom has indicated a strong interest in the project (evidenced by our user reviewer, who is the head of media literacy at Ofcom). By the end of the project we anticipate both Impress and Ofcom will have used our research to help formulate regulatory decisions and policymaking. So, for example, Impress can use the findings of our project to help them respond to specific complaint adjudications that might involve alternative media sites or to revise its code of editorial standards. Ofcom, meanwhile, has a statuary duty to promote media literacy, engaging with many different organisations and agencies.

4. At the very end of the project in October 2021, we will present our findings to fringe events at the Conservative and Labour party conferences, which attract politicians, journalists and party political members and will inform future policy decision making at a time when the new legislative season begins in November 2021 and a general election campaign in 2022 is looming. It is likely our research will re-orientate the campaign strategies of political parties, who have traditionally focused their attention on mainstream media, such as the BBC and ITV. In doing so, political parties will take alternative media platforms more seriously and the audiences that are moving beyond the MSM to engage with them.