While partisan selective exposure could drive audience fragmentation, other individual factors might also differentiate news diets. This study applies a method that disentangles the differential ...contributions of the individual characteristics to audience duplication networks. By analyzing a nationally representative survey about US adults’ media use in 2019 (N = 12,043), we demonstrate that news fragmentation is driven by a myriad of individual factors, such as gender, race, and religiosity. Partisanship is still an important driver. We also distinguish between media exposure and media trust, showing that many cross-cutting ties in co-exposure networks disappear when media trust is considered. We conclude that audience fragmentation research should extend beyond ideological selectivity and additionally investigate how and why other individual-level preferences differentially contribute to fragmentation both in news exposure and in news trust.
Previous studies have identified various individual factors explaining news avoidance, but the understanding of how these factors function within the broader political information environment is ...limited. This study, leveraging a large-scale cross-national survey, reveals that the relationships between individual news interests, news trust, and news avoidance differ across countries with varying levels of press freedom. In nations where the press is strong and free, personal preferences minimally influence individuals’ active avoidance of hard news. News avoidance is not solely a product of individual-level attributes. Rather, the impact of these individual factors is significantly shaped by the overarching political information environment.
Research has shown positive attitudes toward journalists and their roles foster pro-democratic outcomes. With the rise of social media as news sources, algorithms operate as gatekeepers, which may ...alter linkages between public opinion, journalists, and media trust. However, results from a panel-survey conducted in the U.S. underline citizens’ preference for journalist gatekeeping in fueling trust in traditional and social media news. Conversely, preference for algorithmic news selection does not affect people’s levels of trust. Furthermore, traditional news use moderates this relationship as those who report higher traditional news use and a preference for professional news gatekeeping trust traditional news the most. This study contributes to current discussions on the effects of preference for journalists’ or algorithmic news selection, arguing that evaluations of journalists’ editorial work remain critical to explain media trust.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation has been circulating on social media and multiple conspiracy theories have since become quite popular. We conducted a U.S. national survey ...for three main purposes. First, we aim to examine the association between social media news consumption and conspiracy beliefs specific to COVID-19 and general conspiracy beliefs. Second, we investigate the influence of an important moderator, social media news trust, that has been overlooked in prior studies. Third, we further propose a moderated moderation model by including misinformation identification. Our findings show that social media news use was associated with higher conspiracy beliefs, and trust in social media news was found to be a significant moderator of the relationship between social media news use and conspiracy beliefs. Moreover, our findings show that misinformation identification moderated the relationship between social media news use and trust. Implications are discussed.
The Trump-era political environment in the United States is characterized by changes to our information environment, specifically discourse surrounding so-called "fake news," and knowledge of ...political scandals. We explore whether news trust or knowledge of Trump administration scandals impact individuals’ levels of internal, information, and external political efficacy. We find significant and surprising relationships between these measures and political efficacy outcomes. Results contribute to our understanding of how political efficacy is responsive to changes in the political environment.
Given rising levels of hostility and distrust toward the press, this project explores how journalists negotiate, adapt, and work to transform this social climate to both get what they need for their ...stories and (ideally) improve relations with community members. Interviews with 38 journalists who frequently encounter anti-media rhetoric from sources revealed strategies for mitigating distrust and hostility. Although some strategies were counterproductive, others were transformative, as journalists turned conversations with community members into teaching moments. By doing this, journalists can educate the public about the purpose of the press and journalists' routines, thereby spreading news literacy knowledge with sources and members of their community.
This exploratory research introduces and evaluates the effectiveness of a "citizen forum" transparency initiative. Survey research shows that most U.S. citizens have a weak sense of connection to ...news organizations. Many U.S. Americans question the news media's trustworthiness, believe that their news media sources undervalue their audience, and feel that news media do a poor job of explaining story production. Designed to address such disconnects, this research initiative involved conducting two day-long events in two different U.S. Midwestern towns. Inspired by "citizen academies" facilitated in other local civic contexts, the initiative featured in-person panels and forum discussions with journalists and journalism educators. Panel participants talked about journalism-related issues and engaged with audience-posed questions/comments. Employing survey questionnaires and focus group interviews, this study's mixed-method research agenda was structured to examine the extent to which such citizen forum programming can serve to promote understanding of journalism, facilitate a sense of connection with local journalism, and bolster/sustain news trust more generally. Ultimately, this multi-pronged case study offers evidence of positive outcomes relative to citizen forums promoting "engaged journalism," though not without caveats and challenges.
This article develops and tests a theoretical cognitive-affective process model of the hostile media effect (HME). To explain the HME, scholars have mainly focused on cognitive involvement, that is, ...the extent to which an issue is of personal importance. In addition, we introduce the notion of affective involvement and hypothesize three distinct routes responsible for a HME: a cognitive, an affective, and a cognitive-affective route. Simultaneously collected representative survey data from the United States, Norway, and France employing country-invariant measures provide clear evidence that the three routes each and independently drive the HME. Theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.
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