Findings of a content analysis study of The Canary and Evolve Politics

This data collected in this study is based on articles appearing on the websites of two alternative left media sites, The Canary and Evolve Politics between 2015–2019. It analysed all content that appeared in the main pages of each site over the sample periods (with analysis of Evolve Politics beginning in 2016 when it was launched, compared to 2015 for The Canary). This included three-week sample periods in 2015 (October 6–24), 2016 (9–29 October), 2018 (8–28 October) and 2019 (7–27 October).

In total, 1284 articles were generated over the five-year longitudinal study. The level of Canary output (1178 articles) was far higher than Evolve Politics (106 articles), with the sample in the election year generating far more items than other years.

The content analysis systematically examined both the volume and nature of coverage over time. This included the story subject of each article (e.g., politics, health, social affairs etc.) which assessed whether the item was primarily relevant to the UK or an international topic, as well as being principally about politics or another issue. The study then examined all articles about politics in more detail by assessing the nature of the story (whether it was mainly focussed on Labour, Conservative or another specific party) and any sources that were directly quoted in coverage. As part of the analysis, the source of every embedded tweet was quantified and whether a video clip was featured in an item. This included assessing whether the embedded video clip was from mainstream media (e.g., BBC, ITV etc.) or amateur footage (e.g., citizens using mobile phones).

Research results based upon these data are published at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512786.2021.1882875

The data files consists of 3 SPSS files. This includes data on the 1) sources used by the two alternative media sites, 2) their tweets and a more 3) general file with variables such as topics of articles.