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AlterPublics present Covid-19 paper at ICA

New AlterPublics results on alternative news-sharing communities before and during the Covid-19 pandemic were presented at the ICA 2022 conference in Paris.
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  • AlterPublics - Alternative Media and Ideological Counterpublics (Research Project)
    • Jakob Bæk Kristensen presenting AlterPublics work at the ICA conference in Paris.
    Jakob Bæk Kristensen presents AlterPublics work at the ICA conference in Paris. (Photo: Lisa Merete Kristensen)
    By: Tim Ramsland

    Like countless other communication scholars, the AlterPublics team spent the last weekend of May at the ICA conference in Paris diving into the latest research on everything from computational methods to counter publics.

    On Sunday, the team wrapped it all up with an early morning presentation on some of the latest work from AlterPublics, namely a study on partisan and group heterophily within alternative news-sharing communities before and during the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Germany.

    The presentation focused on the question of whether the emergence of anti-system protest movements and sentiments during the pandemic has increased cross-partisan information sharing online. The results show a slight increase in source heterophily in the alternative news networks, mainly due to the increase in anti-systemic news. Surprisingly, the overall sharing of specifically Covid-19-related content tends to increase partisan homophily rather than reach across partisan divides.

    By studying networks that form around the sharing of hyperlinks to alternative news content across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, Youtube, and VKontakte, the study is inherently cross-platform – as is the case for much of the work from AlterPublics.