Trust In News Research Articles

The link between fake news susceptibility and political polarization of the youth in the Philippines

ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship between political polarization, measured as pro-administration and opposition support, and vulnerability to online misinformation through a survey distributed through snowball sampling among students in colleges and universities across the Philippines. Using quasibinomial models, a two-model approach was conducted to disentangle the accuracy goals and partisan goals of the students. We find that polarized supporters of President Duterte are more likely to inaccurately identify fake and real news, compared to polarized supporters of the opposition. This is remarkably similar to trends in the United States where Republicans are more vulnerable to misinformation. Other results also highlight possible trends, such as the link between increased self-reported frequency of seeing fake news and decreased likelihood of correctly identifying fake news, and the link between increased trust in news in social media and decreased odds of correctly identifying both real and fake news.

News Media Trust and Sources of Political Information in West Africa: Mainstream vs. New Media in Ghana and Nigeria

Like many other developed democracies, most democratic countries in West Africa are facing challenges of trust in news media for political information, particularly with the emergence of the non-mainstream media - new social media. Previous research revealed that alternative news media trust is correlated with lower levels of trust in news in Africa and that the presence of private media have failed to offer alternative sources to government media. This paper for the first time seeks to investigate reasons for the increase in distrust in news media among the mainstream and non-mainstream media in West African Ghana and Nigeria, which is the main source for political information in the region. We conducted the study through online surveys for the audience of news media in Ghana and Nigeria who are interested in political news and are frequent users of both mainstream media and new social media for political information. We found out that even though people in these two countries use social media as an alternative source of obtaining political information, yet, they largely still trust mainstream media news for political information rather than social media.

The Impact of News Trust and Scandal Knowledge on Political Efficacy

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.

Before reception: Trust in the news as infrastructure

Given the necessity of trust to the fulfillment of the news media’s democratic and civic roles, the decline of trust in the news has become a major theme in journalism and communication studies, with researchers typically focusing on news audiences and measuring attitudes toward news products. Alongside the importance of reception, this paper advocates for conceptualizing trust not solely as a response to news, but as a key component in the infrastructure that makes news possible. Through an exploration of the role of trust at every stage of the newsmaking process, we argue that trust structures and underpins news funding, production, circulation, and audience measurement. Expanding the conceptual framework through which trust is assessed to consider its infrastructural role affords greater clarity on the consequences of distrust in news. We highlight future research directions and areas of inquiry made possible by theorizing trust in news in this way.

Opting out of News

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also saw an “Infodemic”. The WHO argues that both the amount and the varying degree of trustworthiness of available information about COVID-19 has become difficult to handle. As a result, people might avoid the news altogether. News avoidance refers to turning away from the news – either because of an interest for other content or due to a negative perception of news. Empirical research on news avoidance is scarce and suffers from an inconsistent definition of the concept. Also, news avoidance has hardly been considered in the context of the pandemic. In light of these gaps in research, the current study wants to investigate the role of news avoidance during COVID-19 in Austria, explain its relevance based on data by Google Trends and the Austrian Corona Panel and summarize findings on predictors that help to understand the phenomenon. Findings show an increased interest in news at the beginning of the first and second wave of the pandemic. Further, 70% of the Austrian population show some intentional news avoidance which might be explained by a lack of trust in news and emotional struggles related to the crisis. Implications for future research are discussed.

Ready, Set, Vaccine: The Path to COVID-19 Recovery in Latin America

The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged countries across Latin America. Although the region continues to suffer, the promise of vaccinations provides reason for hope. As vaccines become more widely accessible in Latin America, public support for and willingness to receive the vaccine will be essential to pandemic recovery. Recognizing this, politicians in the region are already actively publicly promoting vaccination. In this research note, we explore Latin Americans’ attitudes on vaccine acceptance as well as the influence of political recruitment for vaccination and both consumption of and trust in news from politicians on self-reported attitudes of vaccine acceptance. We learn that, in general, Latin Americans are receptive to vaccination but that acceptance varies as a function of country, time, and recruitment and, interestingly, that Latin Americans are actually dissuaded from vaccination if encouraged by politicians. We conclude with a discussion and a plea that vaccination campaigns remain separate from political ones.

Designing Transparency Cues in Online News Platforms to Promote Trust: Journalists' & Consumers' Perspectives

As news organizations embrace transparency practices on their websites to distinguish themselves from those spreading misinformation, HCI designers have the opportunity to help them effectively utilize the ideals of transparency to build trust. How can we utilize transparency to promote trust in news? We examine this question through a qualitative lens by interviewing journalists and news consumers---the two stakeholders in a news system. We designed a scenario to demonstrate transparency features using two fundamental news attributes that convey the trustworthiness of a news article: source and message. In the interviews, our news consumers expressed the idea that news transparency could be best shown by providing indicators of objectivity in two areas (news selection and framing) and by providing indicators of evidence in four areas (presence of source materials, anonymous sourcing, verification, and corrections upon erroneous reporting). While our journalists agreed with news consumers' suggestions of using evidence indicators, they also suggested additional transparency indicators in areas such as the news reporting process and personal/organizational conflicts of interest. Prompted by our scenario, participants offered new design considerations for building trustworthy news platforms, such as designing for easy comprehension, presenting appropriate details in news articles (e.g., showing the number and nature of corrections made to an article), and comparing attributes across news organizations to highlight diverging practices. Comparing the responses from our two stakeholder groups reveals conflicting suggestions with trade-offs between them. Our study has implications for HCI designers in building trustworthy news systems.

Antecedents of News Avoidance: Competing Effects of Political Interest, News Overload, Trust in News Media, and “News Finds Me” Perception

Recent changes in the media environment make it easier than ever for people to actively shape their news repertoires according to their habits, needs, and preferences. As convenient as these practices seem, they may favor the development of misperceptions such as “news finds me” perception (NFM) and make it easier for some people to disconnect from news and political content. Building on the conceptualization of news avoidance as a general disposition and its consequential behaviors, this study jointly examines key individual-level predispositions that may motivate intentional news avoidance. Based on a two-wave survey collected in the United States, our results largely corroborate previous work showing the association of political interest, news overload, and trust in professional news with news avoidance, and stress the importance of including the NFM in the theoretical and empirical modelling of news avoidance. Our analyses also suggest that the linkages between these individual-level antecedents and news avoidance are contingent upon the design and robustness of the empirical tests, with NFM yielding the most consistent association across models.

The voices we trust: Public trust in news and information about COVID-19 on Swedish Radio

This article explores the question of trust in news and information about the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of the article is on trust in radio news and the data are collected in Sweden during spring 2020. Two questions are asked: (1) to what extent do people in Sweden express trust in the radio as a medium, and radio news and information as a form of content? (2) How do people themselves explain and discuss their trust in the radio as a medium and in radio news and information? The article draws on both survey data and qualitative interviews in answering these questions. The results show that radio, together with television, is the most trusted medium in the population but that there are differences in the extent of trust within the population that are related to age, economic status and political affiliation. The qualitative interviews showed that the specificities of how radio is organized and the form and mode of expression of radio news can help explain the high trust in the radio medium during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In media we trust? A comparative analysis of news trust in New Zealand and other Western media markets

ABSTRACT In the age of misinformation, trust and trustworthiness – core values of journalism – have become more important as news companies reeling from the pandemic seek emergency funding for their operations from the public and funders look for trusted brands to support. Earlier studies indicated people are more willing to pay for trusted news brands, and recently, the public funding of news has been directed to institutions that are regarded as trustworthy news outlets, and provide information that is in the public interest. While the concept of trust is complicated and measuring it is challenging, trust has rapidly become a key inquiry in academia. However, New Zealand lacks in this research, and this study aims to start to fill that gap. The paper is based on our survey of 1204 New Zealanders, and comparable data from 38 countries surveyed in the Reuters Digital News Report 2019. The paper finds that trust in news in New Zealand is high when compared internationally, but a large proportion (47%) of citizens don’t trust the news. It also finds New Zealanders are more concerned about misinformation and disinformation than respondents in other Western societies.

The effect of news sharing type on news trust and intention to share in social media : The role of press credibility and opinion congruency

The effect of news sharing type on news trust and intention to share in social media : The role of press credibility and opinion congruency

Only “sheep” trust journalists? How citizens’ self-perceptions shape their approach to news

The all-consuming nature of coronavirus news coverage has made the COVID-19 pandemic a unique opportunity to explore the relationship between audience trust in and engagement with news. This study examines that relationship through 60 Zoom-based qualitative interviews conducted with a diverse sample of US adults during the early phase of the pandemic. We find that how people approach the news stems not only from how they perceive the trustworthiness of individual news outlets, but also from their own self-perceptions. News consumers believe journalism generally suffers from issues of bias, but that they are savvy and independent-minded enough to see through those biases to find the truth. Putting the concept of partisan selective exposure into conversation with folk theories of news consumption, we conclude that people’s approach to and trust in news is as dependent on what they bring to the news as it is on what news brings to them.

Social Media and Trust in News: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Facebook on News Story Credibility

People increasingly turn to social media to get their daily news updates. Still, we are only beginning to understand how this development affects people’s perceptions of consumed news stories. The article reports on an experiment designed to investigate the effect the distribution of a news story in social media (Facebook) has on news message credibility. A control group was exposed to a news story on an original news website, and treatment groups were exposed to the same news story shared on Facebook. Results demonstrate that distribution via Facebook affects the credibility of the news story. The effect is strongest when politicians are intermediary-senders, and to some extent depend on the party affiliation of intermediary-sender and the social media audience. In the context of fake news, the results are reassuring: people are less trustful of news they consume through social media. However, the results also suggest that social media news sharing can contribute to the long-term decrease in trust in news.

Mitigating infodemics: The relationship between news exposure and trust and belief in COVID-19 fake news and social media spreading.

IntroductionMisinformation surrounding COVID-19 poses a global public health problem that adversely affects governments’ abilities to mitigate the disease and causes accidental deaths and self-harm due to false beliefs about the virus, prevention measures, vaccines and cures. We aim to examine the relationship between exposure to and trust in COVID-19 news (from Television, social media, interpersonal communication) and information sources (healthcare experts, government, clerics) and belief in COVID-19 myths and false information, as well as critical verification practices before posting on social media.MethodsWe use a cross-sectional researcher-administered phone survey of adults living in Lebanon between March 27 and April 23, 2020.ResultsThe sample included 56.1% men and 43.9% women, 37.9% with a university degree, 63.0% older than 30, and 7% with media literacy training. Those who trust COVID-19 news from social media [95%CI:(1.05–1.52)] and interpersonal communication [95%CI:(1.25–1.82)], and those who trust information from clerics [95%CI:(1.25–1.82)] were more likely to believe in COVID-19 myths and false information. University graduates [95%CI:(0.25–0.51)] and those who trust information from government [95%CI:(0.65–0.89] were less likely to believe in myths and false information. Those who believe in COVID-19 myths and false information [95%CI:(0.25–0.70)] were less likely to engage in critical social media posting practices. Only those who underwent media literacy training [95%CI:(1.24–6.55)] were more likely to engage in critical social media posting practices.ConclusionHigher education and trust in information from government contributed to decreasing belief in COVID-19 myths and false information. Trust in news from social media, interpersonal communication and clerics contributed to increasing belief in COVID-19 myths and false information, which in turn contributed to less critical social media posting practices, thereby exacerbated the infodemic. Media literacy training contributed to increasing critical social media posting practices, thereby played a role in mitigating the infodemic.

The Multidimensionality of Trust: Assessing Finnish Audiences’ Views on the Trustworthiness of Digital News

Finland provides an interesting case study on trust in the media in the digital era. The country is known to exhibit the greatest levels of trust in the political establishment and the government, as well as the media. In the Finnish “digital welfare state,” the news is an inseparable part of the mechanism, producing a high level of social trust within the welfare state system, and Finland features the highest level of media freedom and literacy in Europe. This multimethod study examines different understandings of trust by studying in what ways Finnish audiences experience trust in news, especially when consuming news on digital platforms, and what factors explain trust in different news sources. Our basic premise is that trust can be understood in three ways: as dispositions of individual actors, as the social organization and the relationship between different social nodes and the system, and as a constantly negotiated property of social relations. We apply this three-dimensional framework in two sets of audience survey research data (2019, 2020) and reflect the findings with a focus group and expert interviews as well as with two similar surveys a decade prior. Our results depict relatively high levels of trust in the media in Finland and surprisingly little change in audiences’ perceptions of trustworthiness compared to the earlier surveys. The most defining characteristic of Finnish audiences is critical trust. Audiences are aware of the impacts of digitization, especially the dangers of social media bubbles and disinformation. They also recognize market-driven imperatives of journalism yet appreciate legacy news media in its different digital forms. Our study indicates that a balance between skepticism and reliance on news outlets can exist in audiences’ perceptions of the trustworthiness of digital news.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Positive Psychology: The Role of News and Trust in News on Mental Health and Well-Being

As of writing of this paper, over 94 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with COVID-19 infection and over 2 million people have died. During crisis situations, people seek news to gain information and reduce uncertainty. Although news could provide some means of control, the constant access may also cause emotional distress. Research suggests that consumption of crisis news leads to high psychological distress and fear that may impact intentions to engage in healthy behavior. Fake news and widespread misinformation during this pandemic have obliterated public trust in news which can also affect mental health. Therefore, in this research we explore the impact of news exposure on mental well-being and test for plausible explanations. Utilizing survey methodology, we examine the role of news exposure on perceived stress, happiness, satisfaction, gratitude and the moderating impact of interest in COVID-19 news on the same. In addition, we propose trust in news as a mediator of the relationship between news exposure and abovementioned variables. The findings suggest that high levels of news exposure, combined with low levels of interest in COVID-19 news, led people to experience more stress and low satisfaction, gratitude, and happiness. However, when interest in COVID-19 news was high, people experienced more gratitude and happiness with increasing exposure. High levels of news exposure led to lower levels of trust that led to low satisfaction and happiness. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

Misinformation Concerns and Online News Participation among internet Users in India

The rise of misinformation often circulated in various social media platforms has not only raised concerns among the policymakers and civil society groups, but also among citizens. Drawing upon a cross-sectional survey ( n = 1,013) among English-language internet users in India, this paper tries to identify factors that affect concerns for online misinformation among citizens and how online news participation is affected by the rise of misinformation. After controlling for gender, age, education and income, we found that WhatsApp use, party identification and trust in news are positively associated with the concern for misinformation. Similarly, partisans are more likely to engage with news online. While Facebook and Twitter use are positively associated with online news sharing, the use of WhatsApp is not significant. The empirical evidence adds new insights to the literature on misinformation and online news engagement from the world’s largest democracy.

The dangers of blind trust: Examining the interplay among social media news use, misinformation identification, and news trust on conspiracy beliefs.

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.

Anatomy of audience duplication networks: How individual characteristics differentially contribute to fragmentation in news consumption and trust

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.

The Link Between Fake News Susceptibility and Political Polarization of the Youth in the Philippines

Misinformation, political polarization, its links, and negative societal consequences have long been studied in literature. This study contributes to this field by exploring the relationship of political polarization, using a novel measure that captures political support for President Duterte (representing the administration) against political support for Vice President Robredo (representing the opposition) on a spectrum, and the vulnerability of the Filipino youth to online misinformation through an online survey conducted among college-aged students in various colleges and universities across the Philippines. We find evidence that partisan supporters of President Duterte are more likely to inaccurately identify fake and real news, compared to partisan supporters of the opposition. This is remarkably similar to trends in the United States where Republicans are more vulnerable to misinformation. Other results also highlight possible trends, such as the link between increased self-reported frequency of seeing fake news and decreased likelihood of correctly identifying fake news, and the link between increased trust in news in social media and decreased odds of correctly identifying both real and fake news.