Perceptions of Media Performance: Expectation-Evaluation Discrepancies and Their Relationship with Media-related and Populist Attitudes

Nayla Fawzi,Cornelia Mothes

doi:10.17645/mac.v8i3.3142

Abstract

Public criticism of professional media is omnipresent in many democratic societies. This debate has often been examined concerning what the audience demands from the media (expectations) or how they evaluate media performance (evaluations). Based on a representative, quota-based online survey of the German population in 2019, this study examines citizens’ expectations, evaluations, and the discrepancies between both, as well as their relationship with media trust, socio-political predispositions—particularly populist attitudes—and individual media use in high-choice media environments. Results show that citizens have high expectations of the media which they mainly do not see fulfilled and that expectation-evaluation discrepancies are related to lower media trust in the case of particularly important and/or most noticeably underperformed media functions. Both expectations and evaluations were associated with populist attitudes, but only in the case of anti-elite attitudes in such a way that increased expectations collide with negative media evaluations. For anti-outgroup attitudes, instead, the analyses show a generally negative assessment of journalistic media, both in terms of expectations and evaluations. Media use does only play a minor role.

Highlights

In many Western democracies, some segments of society have become increasingly disappointed with the performance of the established media
When first looking at the descriptive distribution of expectations and evaluations, results show that users have high expectations regarding media performance; the majority of respondents believe that professional journalistic media should fulfill all six normative functions
The present study had two aims: first, to determine the extent to which civic demands of the media collide with their perceptions of actual media performance, and how this discrepancy is linked to overall media trust; and second, to determine to which extent socio-political predispositions and media-related behaviors are linked to citizens’ expectations, evaluations, and expectation–evaluation discrepancies in terms of six media functions: information, public forum, watchdog, analysis, social empathy, and mobilization

Summary

Introduction

In many Western democracies, some segments of society have become increasingly disappointed with the performance of the established media. Professional journalistic media are being criticized for disseminating ‘fake news,’ for being too close to the political and economic elites, and for reporting in a way that substantially diverges from what these citizens perceive as reality (Jackob et al, 2019; Ladd, 2012). These allegations address normative functions that are expected to be fulfilled by journalistic media in democratic societies, such as providing information, serving as a watchdog for society, enabling the constitution of a public forum for the exchange of ideas, or facilitating civic participation and mobilization (e.g., Graber, 2003; Schudson, 2008).

Methods

Results

Conclusion