Right-Wing Fringe Media Use and Conspiracy Ideation in Germany

And the final speaker in this ICA 2024 conference session is the great Helena Rauxloh, exploring how conspiracy ideation explains general news consumption. This is part of the POLTRACK project led by Lisa Merten.

Engagement with news and current affairs has a very important democratic function, but engagement with niche and alternative media especially on the far right also exposes users to content that differs markedly from mainstream news content in style, editorial practices, business models, and strategic aims, while there are also considerable differences in approaches within such right-wing alternative media. Engagement with such media might especially also relate to distrust in mainstream media and conspiracist views.

The present study explores this for the case of Germany, with a particular focus also on users’ pro-Russian stance following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as an indicator of fringe political viewpoints. It draws on mobile and desktops browser tracking data combined with open survey responses in four survey waves, and both classifies participant stances through mixed computational and human coding of such responses and assesses media outlet positioning through computational coding.

Some 31% percent of participants had visited at least one right-wing news site, but heavy users were only about three percent of the total participant base. Men, supporting Russia, with greater conspiracy ideation, greater political interest, lower mainstream media trust, and higher levels of activity were especially likely to engage with such media outlets and their content. The question of causality between these aspects still needs to be addressed, however.