Trust in News in the Context of Political Polarization

Abstract

Focusing on Turkey, this chapter analyzes how polarization influences the perception of misinformation and trust in news from the perspective of news users. Turkish society is politically highly polarized, and this polarization sweeps the mediascape of the country. The established levels of trust in news outlets reflect the dynamics of the polarized society where news users reject the pieces of information coming from media platforms in conflict with their political leanings. Furthermore, Turkey is among the first countries where citizens have complained about misinformation on the internet. This chapter aims to answer the following research questions: How does polarization influence users’ trust in media outlets? How do the users establish and discursively frame trust in news in a severely polarized media context? The study derives from qualitative methodology, including focus groups, media diaries, and interviews with people from different age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds. We demonstrate a variety of tactics which participants adopt to establish trust in news in online environments. However, we also show that polarization has a strong influence on trust in news as a more partisan group of participants clearly indicates that they trust news sources and people, who are in line with their own mentality.