This article proposes a definition of alternative news media and suggests routes for further research. It complements and extends previous conceptualizations in research on alternative media and outlines an umbrella definition of this phenomenon aimed to inspire contemporary research and scholarly debate. Previous research has been guided by a 'progressive' perspective as a form of resistance against 'bourgeois' hegemonic discourse. Such normative evaluations have in turn limited how the phenomenon has been studied empirically, by limiting the scope of research so that important contemporary phenomena fall outside the theoretical map. Conceptualizing alternative news media in the present hybrid and polarized media environment, we first propose a non-normative, multilevel relational definition: Alternative news media position themselves as correctives of the mainstream news media, as expressed in editorial agendas or statements and/or are perceived as such by their audiences or third-parties. This counter-hegemonic alternativeness can emerge on the macro level of societal function, the meso-level of organizations and/or the micro level of news content and producers. Second, demonstrating why this umbrella definition is fruitful in the changing media environment characterized by boundary struggles, crisis in legacy news media and mushrooming of alternative news outlets, we highlight research gaps and propose future research.

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Based on extensive fieldwork, the present article illustrates how the logic of the news media is expanding from influential communication departments to the practices, routines and priorities of traditional career bureaucrats. To theorize the mediatization of a traditional bureaucratic rationale, the article proposes a typology for how rule-based public organizations adapt to and adopt the news media’s implicit ‘logic of appropriateness.’ We emphasize the importance of (1) the news rhythm and (2) news formats, but also (3) how and why being in the media is valued by civil servants, and (4) how this leads to a reallocation of resources and responsibilities within the organization. We find that career bureaucrats both anticipate and adopt a news logic in their daily work. The normative implications of these transformations are discussed in the final section of the article.

Based on a quantitative, comparative analysis of U.S., French, and Norwegian news media, this article examines the use of human interest stories in the coverage of irregular immigration. In an innovative design, it systematically analyzes how human interest framing is related to the frequency and complexity of dominant arguments and perspectives (issue-specific frames). In contrast to the extant literature, arguing that news on immigration reduces immigrants to dangerous and anonymous threats, the article finds that about half the news stories studied have a human face or example. Moreover, these human interest articles tend to frame the issue from the immigrants' perspective, describing their personal stories and struggle. This result nuances the commonly held assumption that human interest frames signal declining news quality, as the number and range of arguments presented are not significantly reduced when human narratives are employed. The prevalence of human interest frames is highest in Norway, where we also identify a reduction in frame complexity in human interest stories, indicating the need to rethink the democratic corporatist model in media system theory.

The personalization of politics has received much attention in both the political science and political communication literature, but the focus has almost entirely been on party leaders and prime ministers. This study investigates the personalization of ministerial communication in Norway, a type of decentralized personalization. It combines a survey of communication workers; in-depth interviews with politicians, communication workers, political reporters, and top-level civil servants; and ethnographic observation inside a ministry. The article goes beyond media-centered perspectives, and identifies several potential drivers and barriers to personalization processes. Based our mixed methods approach we find that ministerial communication in Norway is is strongly centered on the minister in both reactive media management and the proactive promotion of the minister and new policies. This decentralized personalization is driven by both demands from the media and the strategic adaptation by political and administrative actors within ministries. Based on the rich empirically-grounded insights, the article discusses how the interplay between the logic of the contemporary, commercial news media, political ambitions, internal administrative ambitions, and changes in executive government shapes the personalization of ministerial communication, and illuminates how these multiple drivers of personalization are mutually reinforcing.

This article analyses the role of central editors in constructing a national debate in the Norwegian media after the 2011 Oslo terror attacks. A broad literature has documented that after crisis, mainstream media move away from their everyday critical function to a ritual type of journalism that fosters adherence to shared values and support for national authorities. Based on in-depth interviews with debate editors, this article analyses how this type of national crisis discourse is substantiated and guarded through editorial decisions and policies. Second, it gives insights into how changes in the perceived climate of opinion and increasingly vocal critical voices gradually affect editorial practices and challenge consensus. Theoretically, the article combines perspectives from a critical approach (the media as channels for political authorities during crisis) and a cultural approach (the media as constitutive for resilience and recovery) to contribute to the understanding of crisis journalism in a multi-platform, multi-directional media landscape.

The affordances of social media both constrain and enable new forms of political advocacy. The present study identifies four forms of networked advocacy and analyses these with emphasis on constituencies, platforms, activities, and aims. Based on over 40 semistructured elite interviews with interest group leaders and heads of communication, it first finds that interviewees distinguish between social media platforms, tailoring content and genre, to target intended audiences. Second, it finds that social media affordances make awareness‐raising and community‐building more efficient and purposeful for all groups. At the same time, only large organizations with bigger budgets, credibility, technical knowhow, and political relations, systematically engage in networked mobilization and lobbying. Third, interviewees representing these resourceful organizations underline that Twitter represents a new efficient form of middle‐stage lobbying. The study contributes empirical insights into the aims and strategies behind networked advocacy among different groups within one policy field in a local, non‐American context. Theoretically, it combines insights from networked media logics, social affordances, and interest group advocacy to conceptualize how networked media can afford a new form of lobbying conducted as real‐time, semi‐private direct communication with decision makers.

This study examines health news in Norwegian, Spanish, British, and U.S. newspapers. It seeks to fill a gap in journalism studies in the examination of health news as a genre, particularly in a comparative context, and with a focus on broader social and political roles and meanings of health news, rather than effects on individual behavior. It is rooted in literatures that seek to understand health journalism in sociological terms, considering the role of health journalism in relation to institutional relationships between biomedicine, the market, and the state. It departs, in particular, from the theory of biomedicalization, which holds that the field of biomedicine, increasingly transformed into a complex, commercialized “techno-service complex,” has deep cultural impact, including the spreading of a conception of an individualized patient-consumer who will actively seek information to control risk and pursue wellness. In this article, we ask whether research on health news centered around this model, mostly carried out in the United States, is generalizable to European countries where the health system is organized primarily according to a public service model. The study considers three aspects of health news content: the implied audience of news stories, distinguishing in particular between those that address readers as patient-consumers and those that address them as citizens; the distinction among biomedical, lifestyle, and social frames for understanding health issues; and the range of actors reflected in health news as sources and as story originators.