Populist media diets

Abstract

AbstractObjectiveThe changing media landscape highlights the need to understand the dynamic nature of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Research to date has focused on understanding how media diets vary across partisanship, while other, cross‐cutting cleavages remain underexplored. We focus on the relationship between populism and where Americans get their news and how they assess news media credibility.MethodsUsing an original, national survey of Americans (N = 1009) fielded in March 2020, we explore the news media diets of populists, controlling for partisanship, ideology, and relevant covariates.ResultsAnalyses demonstrate that two primary dimensions of populism—anti‐elitism and distrust of experts—relate to media diets in complex ways.ConclusionThose who distrust experts have a more ideologically extreme media diet and put trust in fringe outlets and social media, whereas those with anti‐elite attitudes do not shy away from mainstream outlets and hold positive views of journalists and mainstream media.