The next session at the 2026 International Communication Association conference in Cape Town is on right-wing polarisation in Germany and the United States, and we start with Maximilian Grönegräs, whose interest is in how the far right navigates the hybrid media system in Germany. This focusses on the neofascist AfD party, and particularly explores how the party makes sense of its relation to traditional media.
Traditionally, such studies have focussed only on the relationship between journalists and politicians, without any exploration of external circumstances; but external factors now often influence these relations, with various other actors also playing a significant role. This is driven by the disintermediation and emergence of new media actors in the present hybrid media system.
In particular, we have seen the emergence of far-right alternative news media outlets, forming international alliances and right-wing digital news infrastructures. The present study examined this through a series of interviews with experts and journalists.
The AfD uses antimedia populist criticism of traditional journalism as a justification of its close collaboration with alternative right-wing media and the formation of a counterpublic communicative infrastructure. Party actors navigate traditional, alternative, and social media spaces in order to reach specific imagined target audiences (existing party supporters, the general public, etc.). It also uses alternative media for their intermedia agenda-setting power: (supportive) alternative media coverage often converts into (critical) coverage in traditional media.
However, the AfD is not internally unified, and has now comprehensive media strategy; internal conflicts are also conducted through such mediated communication. This makes these media a site of intraparty struggles, but also keeps the party visible in the media and aids the visibility of various actors within the party. Overall, the party is highly aware of the fluid and chaotic nature of the hybrid media system, and uses it effectively for its own aims; while they dismiss the quality of traditional media, they continue to use these media as a means to an end in their communication.
