Threat or menace to media pluralism? A framework to assess alternative conspiracy media in today’s information landscape

In this article, we examine recent changes in Western media landscapes that witnessed the emergence of alternative conspiracy media critiquing the epistemic hegemony of legacy media, and explore ways to analyze whether they contribute to or hinder democratic discourse. This pressing question depends not only on the empirical manifestations of such media outlets, but also on the ideal conceptualization of media pluralism, which is contingent upon the preferred democratic theory. In this article, we draw from and build upon the work of Daniëlle Raeijmaekers and Pieter Maeseele, and develop a framework to systematically compare media practices against different democratic ideals/theories. We conceptualize a set of criteria that are crucial for the functioning of democracy given each democratic line of thought. Focusing on the three most important contemporary schools – liberal, deliberative, and agonistic – we argue that evaluations of media practices should consider three concepts especially important for media’s functioning in democracy: actor diversity, discursive diversity, and epistemological diversity. We have developed a comparative framework designed for systematic evaluations of media practices, assessing their contribution to media pluralism. This framework may be useful for scholars and media practitioners when assessing the democratic potential of new alternative (conspiracy) media.