(Dis)connected? The usage of traditional and alternative news sources by Scandinavian far-right groups online

One consequence of the increased use of social media seems to be the creation of echo chambers, especially on the far-right. While such echo chambers primarily rely on the homogeneity of the attitudes of the social media users, much of the information on social media comes from articles in more regular news outlets. Accordingly, the availability of politically aligned alternative media may be crucial to maintain echo chambers where no counter-views are present. However, research has found that even far-right groups very critical on traditional media rely on traditional media as legitimate sources of information (Haller and Holt 2019). This paper compares the use of alternative media sources by prominent far-right Facebook groups in the three Scandinavian countries. While the three countries are similar in many respects, they vary both in the maturity and amount of national alternative media. The paper has a dual objective. First it describes the relative importance of alternative media in the different far-right groups. Second, it investigates how this varies across the three countries asking if the maturity of the alternative media affects the usage of traditional media sources. A central hypothesis is that both the relative importance of alternative media and how traditional media is used vary according to the availability and maturity of national alternative media.