This study investigates how exposure to different news sources, propensity to vote (PTV) for a party and demographics are related to belief in conspiracy theories drawing on three repeated ...cross-sectional surveys in Germany 2017–2019. Results show that frequent exposure to alternative news sites and video-sharing platforms increased conspiratorial beliefs. Frequency of exposure to the quality press, public service TV news, and news aggregators diminished beliefs in conspiracy theories. Exposure to TV news, legacy media online, tabloids, social media, and user comments was unrelated to such beliefs. PTV for far left and right parties increased conspiratorial beliefs, moderate party preference reduced them.
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Der Beitrag untersucht medienbezogene Einstellungen und das Ausmaß des Verschwörungsglaubens von Menschen mit AfD-Wahlpräferenz. Er greift die Debatte über Kampfbegriffe wie „Lügenpresse“ und ...„Systemmedien“ auf und erweitert die Radikalisierungsforschung um einen kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Zugang. Dafür verwendet er das Konzept des „Medienzynismus“. Es bezeichnet ein Einstellungsmuster mit verschwörungsideologischen Zügen: Journalist*innen werden als Lügner und System-Kollaborateure betrachtet. Der Beitrag analysiert auch die Mediennutzung von Menschen mit AfD-Präferenz sowie ihre Einstellungen zu Gewalt. Die Basis bilden vier Bevölkerungsumfragen aus den Jahren 2016 bis 2019. Die Daten wurden in Regressionsanalysen und mit einem Strukturgleichungsmodell ausgewertet. Dabei zeigt sich die Radikalität der AfD-Gruppe: Bei ihr sind Medienzynismus und Verschwörungsglaube stark ausgeprägt. Dies geht mit einer überdurchschnittlichen Nutzung „alternativer“ Medien und einem höheren Verständnis für die Anwendung von Gewalt einher. Die Studie findet keine eindeutigen Hinweise für eine sich verschärfende Radikalisierung im Zeitverlauf, aber auch keine Abschwächung. Die Befunde stützen Befürchtungen, dass der Verschwörungsglaube mit einer Affinität zu Gewalt verbunden und die Radikalisierung durch eine spezifische Mediennutzung gefördert werden kann.
Trust in the media has become an increasingly important issue in communication research. Traditional credibility research and modern media skepticism studies have bred a multiplicity of empirical ...findings illustrating the attitudes of the recipients toward the mass media, possible reasons for trust or skepticism, and possible consequences of media trust for the individual and society. However, the psychological causes of trust in the media have not attracted much attention in communication research. This is especially true for personality traits such as individual level of interpersonal trust, which, as a global attitude, might be considered as one possible reason for the development of further trust relationships. In this paper it is assumed that the individual level of generalized social trust is one possible reason for the development of trust in the media. It is assumed that people tending to generally trust their fellow humans also express high levels of trust in the media and in other institutions. Based on a representative telephonic survey of the German population, it was found that there are positive correlations between interpersonal trust, trust in the media, and trust in other institutions.
Embedding a product or a brand into journalistic content may have a negative impact on how the content’s credibility is perceived by recipients. However,
research has not been able to convincingly ...prove that product placement has an effect on how recipients perceive and evaluate media content. This particularly
applies to context effects, such as the effect that the number of visible products or brands has on the perceived credibility of the journalistic content the placement
is embedded in. This study addresses two questions: whether the use of visible products or brands embedded in journalistic content influences the credibility that
recipients attribute to such content, and how the tenor of the content, positive or negative, interacts with the placed products. Based on experimental findings and
real-time response measurements, we conclude that the number of visible products does not significantly affect the credibility attributed to journalistic content and
that judgments about credibility are influenced by the interaction between the number of products placed and the tenor of the content.
Information technology is ever-changing. Information and communication technology (ICT) journalists play a significant part in diffusing, explaining and interpreting these new technologies and in ...forging the societal understanding of future trends, influencing both their audience and the developers they cover. They are important gatekeepers and their coverage is – most likely – decisive for the success or failure of new products. To explore this function of ICT journalism, an online survey of 102 ICT journalists in Germany was conducted, including 32 journalists in managing roles. This study focuses on two research questions: (a) how do ICT journalists perceive their relationship to and their effects on the audience; (b) how do journalists perceive their relationship with and their effects on ICT manufacturers? Our findings suggest that ICT journalists picture themselves in a key role as clandestine deciders who shape the audience’s consuming behaviour, as well as developers’ strategies for designing products.
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Zusammenfassung
In den letzten Jahren haben viele Studien untersucht, welche Faktoren das Vertrauen in Medien beeinflussen können. Zu einigen dieser Faktoren gibt es vorläufige wissenschaftliche ...Erkenntnisse, die eine klare Richtung andeuten, zu anderen ist die Forschungslage eher heterogen. Wir überprüfen daher anhand einer Trendstudie mit Befragungsdaten aus den Jahren 2017, 2018 und 2019 mit je 1200 Befragten, welche Personenmerkmale sich in Deutschland über einen längeren Zeitraum als stabile Einflussfaktoren erwiesen haben. Dazu führen wir blockweise Regressionsanalysen im Zeitverlauf durch. Neben soziodemografischen Faktoren und der Mediennutzung gehören dazu die Einstellungen zu Politik, Verschwörungsglaube und interpersonales Vertrauen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass alle Gruppen von Variablen mit Medienvertrauen im Zusammenhang stehen, dass ihr Einfluss jedoch unterschiedlich groß ist. In komplexeren Regressionsmodellen wird der Einfluss mancher Variablen vom Effekt anderer Variablen überlagert – dies könnte eine Erklärung für die bislang äußerst heterogene Forschungslage zu beispielsweise dem Einfluss der Soziodemografika auf Medienvertrauen sein. Die Ergebnisse verdeutlichen auch, welche Rezipientinnen und Rezipienten den Medien weniger oder gar nicht vertrauen.
Abstract
Media trust has become a highly relevant topic in Communication Science in the past years. Trust in societal institutions, e.g., the media, is an important prerequisite for the functioning of democratic systems. The actual debate on the ‘lying press’ and ‘Fake News’ has intensified research on many different aspects of media trust. This encompasses (1) studies on the amount of media trust citizens have and on (2) different forms of media trust. Furthermore, (3) consequences of media trust have been investigated, e.g. how media trust shapes political judgements or perceptions, as well as (4) the media coverage on trust. Other researchers (5) put their focus on methodological aspects and try to improve the operationalization and the measurement of media trust. In addition, (6) factors which can influence media trust have been analyzed—amongst them recipients’ characteristics and media use, but, especially in international comparisons, media system factors, societal influence, a country’s economic performance or political conditions. The focus of our study is on the influence of recipient’s characteristics on media trust. Regarding some factors, as for example sociodemographic variables, their influence is still unclear because of very heterogenous findings. However, regarding other factors, as for example political attitudes, we already know that they seem to influence media trust—but in different studies, this influence is differently intensive. In our study, we want thus to find out which characteristics of recipients including their media use have a stable influence on media trust over time.
Therefore, we use data from a long-term study on media trust: telephone surveys representative for the German population aged 18 and above in 2017, 2018 and 2019 with 1200 participants each. Besides media trust, we asked for different characteristics of respondents that can influence media trust: sociodemographic variables, media use, political attitudes, conspiracy beliefs and interpersonal trust. We use stepwise regression analysis in each year to find out which variables show a stable influence on media trust over time and which amount of media trust can be explained by different kinds of variables.
The results show that all kinds of variables investigated—sociodemographic variables, media use, political attitudes, conspiracy beliefs and interpersonal trust—influenced media trust in the years 2017–2019. In the most complex models, 25% of the variance in media trust could be explained by these variables. Amongst the sociodemographic variables, age, formal education and gender showed an effect on media trust—older people, woman and those with a lower formal education had lower media trust. However, the influence of these variables disappeared partly in more complex regression models. Regarding media use, especially the use of public broadcasting TV and of so-called “alternative” news websites like Russia Today showed a stable effect on media trust—frequent users of public service broadcasting TV had higher, frequent users of alternative news websites lower media trust. The influence of some media types, e.g. newspapers or private TV, disappeared in more complex regression analysis. Political attitudes also were an important factor influencing media trust. Strongest was the effect of satisfaction with the democratic system—those whose satisfaction with our democratic system was high also had a higher media trust. Those whose political apathy was high showed lower levels of media trust. Furthermore, belief in conspiracy theories and interpersonal trust were related to media trust. Those who tended to believe conspiracy theories to be true had lower media trust—those with a high interpersonal trust had higher media trust.
In an additional regression analysis, we analyzed in the data set of the year 2018 other variables which we only had explored in this year. The goal of this additional analysis was to show which kinds of variables also can help to explain media trust and on which variables future research could thus concentrate. The analysis showed that also citizen’s personal economic situation, alienation from the media, trust in other societal institutions (e.g., politics, justice) and the willingness for political participation were related to media trust, whereas knowledge about media had no effect on media trust.
Overall, our analysis showed which characteristics of respondents showed a constant influence on media trust over time and whose influence was rather unstable. The effects we found were, due to our long-term study design, independent from the time of measurement, the actual mood in society or current discussions about single issues. We give thus genuine insights in an area where until now, research findings from surveys were rather inconsistent. Despite not analyzing panel data in our study and using a global measurement of media trust, we showed which factors influencing media trust future research could concentrate on and why long-term studies are highly relevant in this field.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Deprived, Radical, Alternatively Informed Ziegele, Marc; Resing, Maike; Frehmann, Katharina ...
European journal of health communication,
09/2022, Volume:
3, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The Covid-19 pandemic was accompanied by a massive increase of the supply and demand for pandemic-related information. Similarly, conspiracy theories about the origins and functions of the Covid-19 ...virus flourished during the early stages of the pandemic. The present study draws on a nationally representative sample of the German population aged 18+ (N = 1,207) to investigate factors that are associated with people’s susceptibility to believe in such theories. We draw on research from sociology, political science, and communication to predict that factors related to relative deprivation, political radicalism, and the consumption of alternative news on websites, video platforms, Social Network Sites, and messenger services are associated with an increased belief in Covid-19 conspiracy theories. The data largely supports our assumptions. Additionally, we show that the strength of belief in Covid-19 conspiracy theories is associated with reduced vaccination intentions, which suggests detrimental real-world health consequences of such a belief.
Deprived, Radical, Alternatively Informed Marc Ziegele; Maike Resing; Katharina Frehmann ...
European journal of health communication,
09/2022, Volume:
3, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The Covid-19 pandemic was accompanied by a massive increase of the supply and demand for pandemic-related information. Similarly, conspiracy theories about the origins and functions of the Covid-19 ...virus flourished during the early stages of the pandemic. The present study draws on a nationally representative sample of the German population aged 18+ (N = 1,207) to investigate factors that are associated with people’s susceptibility to believe in such theories. We draw on research from sociology, political science, and communication to predict that factors related to relative deprivation, political radicalism, and the consumption of alternative news on websites, video platforms, Social Network Sites, and messenger services are associated with an increased belief in Covid-19 conspiracy theories. The data largely supports our assumptions. Additionally, we show that the strength of belief in Covid-19 conspiracy theories is associated with reduced vaccination intentions, which suggests detrimental real-world health consequences of such a belief.
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