Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, alternative online news media were predominately thought to spread false information on the coronavirus and heavily engage in conspiracy theories. The populist and far-right news outlets especially were said to strategically exploit people’s fears to further their own hate campaigns against migrants, political elites and the established media. This research aims to give a more detailed account of how five German populist far-right digital news outlets framed the ongoing crisis from January to May 2020 and managed to integrate the topic into their established narratives. For this qualitative content analysis, articles from the digital news sites of Compact, Junge Freiheit, Eigentümlich Frei, Deutsche Stimme and Zuerst were analysed regarding the topics, claims, actors and rhetoric devices that they used. The result of the study was that, rather than being swayed by strategic whims to exploit the crisis at all costs, the outlets relied on their established framing habits and were able to incorporate the crisis into all of their usual reporting. They were able to integrate the topic into overarching narratives, which not only confirmed worldviews held by their established reader base, but may also hold significant sway over new readers seeking reassurance in uncertain times. Finally, the thesis directed attention to the importance that language and presentation played in accomplishing this balancing act, establishing the need for further research on the language of the populist far right online.
