Alternative news media are largely independent players in the news environment, which allows them to publish more alternative, and possibly more radical, news content. Do they utilize their independence to display actors that are underrepresented in the mainstream news? And does it affect the actor diversity in their news coverage and the journalistic environment as a whole? This study scrutinizes the differences in actor diversity and actor presentation in articles published by alternative and mainstream news media to gauge if alternative media are more one-sided and if they contribute to the external actor diversity of the news environment. We analyze a sample of news articles on migration and social affairs published by two mainstream media and four alternative outlets. Despite limited differences in article-level actor diversity between alternative and mainstream news media, our findings highlight that right-wing and left-wing alternative media exploit their editorial independence differently to highlight other actor categories. Left-wing alternative news media present more civil society actors, while right-wing alternative news outlets pay more attention to right-wing politicians and parties. Thus, alternative news media are not that different in terms of internal actor diversity, but they modestly advance the external actor diversity in the news environment.

One outlook, many perspectives? Diversity in Flemish news media and the perception of the audience A diverse range of actors and viewpoints can safeguard the quality of news reporting and the distribution of attention to different sides to a story. In this study, we look at the differences in content diversity between the news coverage on two (one socio-economic and one socio-cultural) cases in the Flemish news environment and how these differences translate into perceptions of diversity and bias with the audience. Despite limited differences in content diversity, we find that news items on the sociocultural and socio-economic case highlight different actors. Moreover, news items on the socio-cultural case are more neutral, while the coverage on the socio-economic issue contains more (balanced) viewpoints. These differences in content are largely translated into differences in perception. However, we find that a slight bias in perception of tone in the coverage on the socio-cultural issue is due to personal characteristics and issue-relevant attitudes.