  The COVID-19 pandemic has not only had severe political, economic, and
societal effects, it has also affected media and communication systems in
unprecedented ways. While traditional journalistic media has tried to adapt to
the rapidly evolving situation, alternative news media on the Internet have
given the events their own ideological spin. Such voices have been criticized
for furthering societal confusion and spreading potentially dangerous "fake
news" or conspiracy theories via social media and other online channels. The
current study analyzes the factual basis of such fears in an initial
computational content analysis of alternative news media's output on Facebook
during the early Corona crisis, based on a large German data set from January
to the second half of March 2020. Using computational content analysis,
methods, reach, interactions, actors, and topics of the messages were examined,
as well as the use of fabricated news and conspiracy theories. The analysis
revealed that the alternative news media stay true to message patterns and
ideological foundations identified in prior research. While they do not spread
obvious lies, they are predominantly sharing overly critical, even
anti-systemic messages, opposing the view of the mainstream news media and the
political establishment. With this pandemic populism, they contribute to a
contradictory, menacing, and distrusting worldview, as portrayed in detail in
this analysis.
