Abstract
AbstractDiscussions around declining trust in the US media can be vague about its effects. One classic answer comes from the persuasion literature, in which source credibility plays a key role. However, existing research almost universally takes credibility as a given. To overcome the potentially severe confounding that can result from this, we create a hypothetical news outlet and manipulate to what extent it is portrayed as credible. We then randomly assign subjects to read op-eds attributed to the source. Our credibility treatments are strong, increasing trust in our mock source until up to 10 days later. We find some evidence that the resulting higher perceived credibility boosts the persuasiveness of arguments about more partisan topics (but not for a less politicized issue). Though our findings are mixed, we argue that this experimental approach can fruitfully enhance our understanding of the interplay between source trust and opinion change over sustained periods.
Highlights
IntroductionOverall levels of trust have generally declined, while citizens continue to polarize along partisan lines on the sources they consider to be trustworthy (Ladd 2011; Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler 2017)
Americans’ trust in mainstream media is increasingly lopsided
There are hints of small compensatory effects: those to whom we present 24hr Nation as highly credible show slightly more negative attitudes toward The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. These findings are suggestive of the possibility that the amount of available media trust is fixed: as trust in one source increases, there is less available for other sources
Summary
Overall levels of trust have generally declined, while citizens continue to polarize along partisan lines on the sources they consider to be trustworthy (Ladd 2011; Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler 2017). These patterns are troubling, because for functional deliberation to be possible, citizens require some common ground – but given partisan media presenting different versions of reality, increasing polarization of factual beliefs is more likely (Arceneaux and Johnson 2013; Bakshy, Messing, and Adamic 2015; Tsfati 2010). The assumption that credible sources have the power to persuade is central to the literature, as a recent review on persuasion – listing “speakers/sources” as one of four key variables – shows (Druckman 2022)
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