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Across Europe, Public Service Media (PSM) are increasingly subject to bias accusations in public debates. Excluding academic attention for actual bias in news content, research into the nature of bias accusations is limited. This article studies bias accusations against Dutch PSM in online discourse. Through a qualitative content analysis of tweets and blogs (2017–2022), our analysis develops a novel typology of bias accusations—positional, information, and framing bias—going beyond academic definitions. Bias accusations are diverse in nature, reflect strong perceived intentionality, and refer to heterogeneous social, political groups, yet are easily merged into singular political ideological divides.

Media and communication have become ubiquitous in today's societies and affect all aspects of life. On an individual level, they impact how we learn about the world, how we entertain ourselves, and how we interact with others. On an organisational level, the interactions between media and organisations, such as political parties, NGOs, businesses and brands, shape organisations' reputation, legitimacy, trust and (financial) performance, as well as individuals' consumer, political, social and health behaviours. At the societal level, media and communication are crucial for shaping public opinion on current issues such as climate change, sustainability, diversity, and well-being. Media challenges are widespread and include mis- and disinformation, the negative impact of algorithms on our information diets, challenges to our privacy, cyberbullying, media addiction, and unwanted persuasion, among many others. All this makes the study of media and communication crucial. This book provides a broad overview of the ways in which people create, use, and experience their media environment, and the role of media and communication for individuals, organisations, and society. The chapters in the book were written by researchers from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. ASCoR is today the largest research institute of its kind in Europe and has developed over the past 25 years into one of the best communications research institutes in the world