This is how to recognize conspiracy theory–based alternative news media: a comparative analysis of style, text structure, and argumentation in alternative news media and mainstream news media

Abstract Conspiracy beliefs are associated with negative outcomes on a personal and societal level. Therefore, it is important to help people recognize texts that might spread conspiracy theories, such as news articles from alternative news media (ANM). In order to do so, insight is needed into the linguistic features of these types of articles. In this paper (i) stylistic, (ii) structural, and (iii) argumentation features are analyzed to see to what extent they might help readers in recognizing ANM. The results demonstrate that (i) ANM use more clickbait features per headline than mainstream media (MSM), but that some clickbait features are used by ANM and MSM alike; that (ii) the last paragraph in ANM often presents an evaluation or opinion, whereas last paragraphs in MSM usually present additional information; and that (iii) the way quotes are used as arguments seems similar at first glance, but a more detailed look might help readers recognize ANM news articles. These results can be used to design educational interventions to help readers in learning to distinguish different types of news sources and be more resilient towards conspiracy theories.