Abstract

In the first decades of this century, alternative media have firmly established themselves thanks to the transformation of the media ecosystem made possible by the massification of the Internet and social media platforms. From a peripheral position, these media differ from the traditional press, which tends to report almost exclusively on the issues that interest the elites and their authoritarian voices, which is even more pronounced in Latin America. A comparative and critical qualitative analysis of the information published by two Chilean alternative media with opposing ideological positions - El Líbero (right) and El Ciudadano (left) - in August 2024, a period before the elections, was carried out to examine their predominant thematic agendas, the use of sources and the quality of information. The results clearly show distinct thematic agendas and the use of sources based on their ideological positions, as well as opposing frames. In both media, the origin of many sources is not clearly identifiable, there are no verification filters, only one or no live source is used in two thirds of the publications and opinions are used in informative texts, which affects the quality of the information. © 2025 Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. All rights reserved.