The phenomenon of media trust has been on the agenda of researchers for a long time. Today, with the growing amount of information and sources of information in the era of post-truth, the issue of trust in the media is becoming even more relevant. The previous research in this regard was presented by case studies and comparative studies of democratic, most often European states and the USA. The goal of this study is to look at the phenomenon of trust in the media through the prism of political regimes, democratic and undemocratic. The study aims to answer two research questions: What is the relationship between trust in media and trust in social institutions in different regimes? What affects media trust in different regimes? The theoretical framework is built, first, on the individual-level characteristics of people and how they affect media trust. And second, on the institutional theories that claim that the system in which individuals live also affects their level of trust. The World Value Survey data is used in the analysis. There are several important findings that the research makes. There are no clear patterns regarding the variation of media trust depending on a political regime. Trust in media and trust in social institutions correlate in both regimes, but more strongly in non-democracies. The same individual-level characteristics affect trust differently depending on the regime. Out of all the macro-level variables only perception of corruption seems to influence media trust.

Protests constitute one of the most important means for citizens to raise key issues on the social agenda and express marginalised voices, in which an important factor to spread their message is attracting mass media coverage. However, previous research has repeatedly found that the mass media delegitimizes protests and focus on the protest event itself rather than the issues behind it. Meanwhile, the role of alternative media on digital platforms is growing stronger. Given this background, this study sets out to answer how U.S. mainstream- and alternative media depicts three protests in Latin America in 2019 and how they potentially differ in their depiction of these protests. More specifically, the study aims to find if the media portrays protests in a negative manner, and if so, how it is done. These questions are analysed through postcolonialism and the protest paradigm theory, which suggests that the media delegitimize protests through certain ways of describing the protest events. Through a critical discourse analysis of 36 articles in total, this study finds that both the mainstream- and alternative media largely adheres to the protest paradigm. It is found that violent aspects of the protests are often in focus, as well as an absence of lifting the structural issues that the protesters want to lift. However, exceptions that deviate from the theory are found as well, indicating that the protest paradigm alone may not be sufficient to explain the complexities behind the media’s coverage of protest events.

This thesis aimed at examining, in the middle of an intense sociopolitical crisis in the Greek landscape, how young users of alternative media in Greece reflect on traditional media, how they view alternative media and how they use them in order to mobilize, engage politically and acquire types of oppositional knowledge. In-depth interviews on Greek millennials indicated a cognitive-driven relationship to mainstream media while a generic tendency towards alternative media was notived, however, accompanied by a critical stance. Political participation was present on both ffline and online version, with an apparent inclination to online types through e-petitions and expressive forms of action, such as content sharing and posts on social media. Oppositional types of knowledge were identified through the millennials' responses, though, with a presence of reservedness and critique. The shift towards alternative media depicted the emergence of a concrete digital familiarization of Greek millennials who seriously engage to sociopolitical issues and at the same time preserve their doubts as far as credibility or objectivity of news are concerned. Future research could be conducted focusing on the content analysis of alternative media news platforms. Therefore, micro-organizational aspects, such as agenda-setting and news production along with ethical lines that are followed, would enrich the picture of alternative media landscape in Greece and maybe provide the motivation to examine the aforementioned conditions in other media systems, as well.

The increasing presence of sustainability in multiple contexts of today’s societies has led to the phe- nomenon of proliferating representations of the term. A lack of consensus towards the terminology within theory and media representations formed the base for uncertain understandings in public. Corre- spondingly, this supports the argument for investigating the public’s representation of sustainability to contribute knowledge about the current understanding of the term in public. As a platform for open and globalized communication, social media, Instagram in specific, is considered as the research field for investigation. In detail, this analysis aims to investigate large-scale user-generated data with the ‘#sus- tainability’ on Instagram as the research context, to provide knowledge on the users’ representation of the phenomenon. A mixed-method approach of computational and human-driven qualitative and quan- titative content analysis enriched the scope of the analysis to an amount of 50.000 Instagram posts. Correspondingly, the analysis of over 770.000 co-occurred hashtags within the posts allowed a contex- tualization of the phenomenon to key themes represented by the platform’s users. According to framing and agenda-setting theory as theoretical frameworks of this thesis, the findings reveal a dominant fram- ing of sustainability from an environmental perspective, in correlation to the current media agenda. Moreover, the results disclose four key meta-frames, indicating dominant patterns of representing sus- tainability in the context of Eco-Efficiency, Accountability, Consumerism, and Identity. In addition to that, the findings revealed primarily positive framing towards sustainability by the public.The theoretical contribution is an analytical investigation of sustainability representation on Insta- gram, whereby co-occurred themes help to guide further initiatives to improve behavior change and the shift towards a sustainable future.

This study scrutinises, from a critical perspective, how Swedish mainstream news media depict children and youths categorised as unaccompanied after the identified discursive shift in the late autumn of 2015, where a more hostile and negative reporting on refugees became even more prominent. In addition, it explores what different power structures that are made visible in the news reporting. This is made possible by scrutinising 40 articles from the major national newspapers in Sweden that have daily releases, the so called mainstream media. The critical discourse analysis is used as a method and theory in order to find a focus that is critical and questioning towards existing power structures. Additionally, it contains a focus on how borders and differences are created between certain groups of people by using theoretical perspectives on otherness and postcolonial theory. The study shows an ambivalent media picture and clearly makes unequal and hierarchical power structures visible through the use of different assumptions, accepted truths and journalistic techniques.

This study is set out to conduct a comparative analysis of mainstream and alternative media to understand how The Cape Times mainstream newspaper and GroundUp alternative online media outlet framed the 2017 “service delivery protests” in Cape Town, South Africa. Scholarly literature has demonstrated that the mainstream media marginalises the voices of certain communities and that the alternative media can fill this gap. Often, marginalised communities use protests to attract media coverage, as a way of reaching both the public and elected officials. Ultimately, numerous protest groups find it difficult to get the attention they desire, while news coverage of the social conflict is framed within a protests paradigm. The study analyses differences in the two media outlets’ coverage of social conflict, including the use of delegitimising devices such as the prominent use of official sources for quotes, while using dramatic frames that tend to ridicule protest action and portray them as violent. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used in a multimethod approach. The data was found in the SA Media news clippings database, supplemented by searches on Google and the GroundUp search engines. Coverage of the protest in GroundUp was in line with the literature, which states that the horizontal nature, bottom-up and fluid traditions of alternative media may be a more appropriate conduit for protest communications and social movement (Van De Donk et al, 2004; Dahlberg, 2007). The key finding of this study was that the mainstream Cape Times deviated from the protest paradigm, using the protesters as sources in preference to officials. This finding is a departure from the reviewed literature, which indicated that the mainstream media has a habit of following the protest paradigm when covering protests events, marginalising and dehumanising protesters and relying on official sources (Mcleod & Hertog, 1999). It also links to previous scholarship that has established a strong connection between the commercialisation of the media and the robust representation of official sources in the media.

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This thesis examines the reflection of alternative music in the mainstream media and the reflection of mainstream music in the alternative media. The traditional dichotomous division of popular culture and music proposed mainly by academic fields of cultural and popular music studies provides a theoretical basis for the research. The practical part then analyses selected media content and attempts to verify the validity of these propositions in the context of contemporary music and media studies. The selected sample is composed of music articles derived from six Czech media (three of them mainstream and three alternative). The analysis itself focuses primarily on external characteristics which the author recognises from the specific references in the texts and which reflect the position of mentioned artists in the music industry, and the points of view expressed by journalists in their texts. This thesis thus aims to provide an overview of how Czech media reflect on these two allegedly oppositional contexts and deduces whether the dichotomous perception of mainstream and alternative is still relevant in contemporary music and media.

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Purpose/aim: Are there any differences between how “old” and “young” groups within social movements in Sweden view (value) and use alternative and mainstream media?</p><p>Material/method: The answer to the research problem is sought by conducting qualitative research interviews with representatives of four different groups: Alternativ Stad, Folkkampanjen mot Kärnkraft-Kärnvapen, Attac Sverige and Ingen Människa är Illegal. The theoretical framework consists of research on social movements, especially on their relation to media, and on alternative media.</p><p>Main results: There exist some, but not great, differences between how “old” and “young” groups view and use mainstream and alternative media. The differences are relatively small when it comes to views on media and somewhat larger concerning media use. These differences in media use stem mostly from the differences in organizational structure. </p><p>Keywords: Social movements, alternative media, mainstream media, media views, media usage.</p>