Umeå University's logo

umu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
This isn't journalism, it's propaganda!: patterns of news media bias accusations on Twitter, 2010–2020
Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg, SE, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5028-0408
2025 (Danish)In: Digital Journalism, ISSN 2167-0811, E-ISSN 2167-082X, Vol. 13, no 5, p. 970-989Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In several countries, research shows that mainstream news media have increasingly become a target of political attacks, and a recurring accusation is that the news media are biased politically. Since social media play an important role in circulating accusations of media bias, in this paper we analyze 167,527 Swedish tweets about media bias over a ten-year period using the mixed-methods CADS approach, which incorporates computational processes with discourse analysis. Specifically, we explore the prevalence of bias accusations over time and which news outlets constitute the main targets; from what political perspectives these bias accusations have originated over time; and how discourses accusing the news media of political bias are constructed. Among other things, the results show that accusations of left-wing bias are much more common than accusations of right-wing bias. A key reason is that actors on the political right engage much more frequently in accusations of media bias than their center-left counterparts, and that discourses of media bias are heavily dominated by right-wing populist tropes in which mainstream media are part of the "corrupt", lying elite who spread "politically correct" disinformation.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Routledge, 2025. Vol. 13, no 5, p. 970-989
Keywords [en]
attacks on media, Media bias, Mixed methods, news media, public service, right-wing populism, Sweden, Twitter
National Category
Media and Communication Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-237668DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2024.2435574ISI: 001409613300001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85216490128OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-237668DiVA, id: diva2:1953923
Available from: 2025-04-23 Created: 2025-04-23 Last updated: 2025-12-12Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(1718 kB)70 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT02.pdfFile size 1718 kBChecksum SHA-512
ae5ac7f13578dbb52ae24f1f4d6ceb36e5a96e0c2710110d85cb3330ed170405260c0c81ec94e120d01e210587843e344402fb10861857820820b7c3005814bc
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Åkerlund, Mathilda

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Åkerlund, Mathilda
By organisation
Department of Sociology
In the same journal
Digital Journalism
Media and Communication Studies

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 142 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 581 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf