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Through a quantitative content analysis (n = 878), this study examines and compares intermedia agenda-setting between right-wing alternative media outlets and mainstream online newspapers in the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Scholars have described the process of intermedia agenda-setting as an instrument used to uphold news norms within the journalistic community. Giving issue attention to another news media institution is considered a validation of the first news media's decision to report on a specific issue. This study, however, demonstrates how mainstream newspapers most often give issue attention to right-wing alternative media outlets in order to protect the boundaries of professional journalism as an institution as well as the limits of the debate from actors that are perceived as both journalistically and ideologically deviant. Regarding differences between the three countries, the findings reveal that the intermedia agenda-setting influence of alternative media outlets is higher in countries where populist actors are placed within "the sphere of legitimate controversy" (Norway and Denmark) than in countries where populist actors are banished to "the sphere of deviance" (Sweden).

Despite the central role that ordinary citizens play as ‘trustors’ (i.e. the actor that places trust) in the literature on news media trust, prior quantitative studies have paid little attention to how ordinary citizens understand and define news media trust. Here, trust tends to be studied from a researcher-defined – rather than an audience-defined – perspective. To address this gap, we investigate how the public describes news media trust in their own words by asking them directly. We analyse 1500 written responses collected through a Norwegian online probability-based survey, here using a semisupervised quantitative text analysis technique called structural topic modelling (STM). We find that citizens’ own understanding of news media trust can be categorised into four distinct topics that, in some instances, are comparable to academic and professional discourse. We show that citizens’ written descriptions of news media trust vary by many of the same variables that prior research has found to be important predictors of levels of trust. Respondents’ written descriptions of news media trust vary by education and satisfaction with democracy but not other known predictors of trust, such as ideological self-placement and political preferences.

Using the mainstream media as a starting point, this article argues that the ongoing changes in the mainstream/alternative continuum are not just dependent on how right-wing alternative news media relate to certain journalistic practices but also on mainstream media reactions to their emergence. The following questions are thus asked: Are right-wing alternative news media accepted or rejected as journalistic actors, and are their ideological orientation deemed legitimate or deviant? this article combines insights into how the boundaries between mainstream and alternative media have become increasingly blurred in the digital context and uses the concepts of boundary work, interloper media and Hallin's three-sphere model to examine these questions in a Scandinavian context. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 430 online mainstream news articles, this study demonstrates striking differences between the Scandinavian countries. While there are few or no reactions from the Danish mainstream media, the Swedish mainstream media largely reject right-wing alternative media as journalistic actors and position their ideological orientation as deviant. The Norwegian case is found in between. The results contribute to developing the scholarly understanding of the mainstream/alternative continuum and, thus, right-wing alternative news media's position in the wider digital media landscape from a mainstream media perspective.

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