News media trust and its impact on media use: toward a framework for future research

Strömbäck, Jesper; Tsfati, Yariv; Boomgaarden, Hajo G.; Damstra, Alyt; Lindgren, Elina; Vliegenthart, Rens; Lindholm, Torun

doi:10.1080/23808985.2020.1755338

Cited by 325 publications

(261 citation statements)

References 80 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

204

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To gauge different levels of media trust in news sources, we asked participants to indicate how much they trust information about COVID-19 from the aforementioned media outlets (1=not at all, 7=very much) [ 38 ]. Trust in traditional media demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach α=.86, mean 4.83, SD 1.20).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Intergroup Contact, COVID-19 News Consumption, and the Moderating Role of Digital Media Trust on Prejudice Toward Asians in the United States: Cross-Sectional Study

Tsai¹,

Phua²,

Pan³

et al. 2020

J Med Internet Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background The perceived threat of a contagious virus may lead people to be distrustful of immigrants and out-groups. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the salient politicized discourses of blaming Chinese people for spreading the virus have fueled over 2000 reports of anti-Asian racial incidents and hate crimes in the United States. Objective The study aims to investigate the relationships between news consumption, trust, intergroup contact, and prejudicial attitudes toward Asians and Asian Americans residing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare how traditional news, social media use, and biased news exposure cultivate racial attitudes, and the moderating role of media use and trust on prejudice against Asians is examined. Methods A cross-sectional study was completed in May 2020. A total of 430 US adults (mean age 36.75, SD 11.49 years; n=258, 60% male) participated in an online survey through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. Respondents answered questions related to traditional news exposure, social media use, perceived trust, and their top three news channels for staying informed about the novel coronavirus. In addition, intergroup contact and racial attitudes toward Asians were assessed. We performed hierarchical regression analyses to test the associations. Moderation effects were estimated using simple slopes testing with a 95% bootstrap confidence interval approach. Results Participants who identified as conservatives (β=.08, P=.02), had a personal infection history (β=.10, P=.004), and interacted with Asian people frequently in their daily lives (β=.46, P<.001) reported more negative attitudes toward Asians after controlling for sociodemographic variables. Relying more on traditional news media (β=.08, P=.04) and higher levels of trust in social media (β=.13, P=.007) were positively associated with prejudice against Asians. In contrast, consuming news from left-leaning outlets (β=–.15, P=.001) and neutral outlets (β=–.13, P=.003) was linked to less prejudicial attitudes toward Asians. Among those who had high trust in social media, exposure had a negative relationship with prejudice. At high levels of trust in digital websites and apps, frequent use was related to less unfavorable attitudes toward Asians. Conclusions Experiencing racial prejudice among the Asian population during a challenging pandemic can cause poor psychological outcomes and exacerbate health disparities. The results suggest that conservative ideology, personal infection history, frequency of intergroup contact, traditional news exposure, and trust in social media emerge as positive predictors of prejudice against Asians and Asian Americans, whereas people who get COVID-19 news from left-leaning and balanced outlets show less prejudice. For those who have more trust in social media and digital news, frequent use of these two sources is associated with lower levels of prejudice. Our findings highlight the need to reshape traditional news discourses and use social media and mobile news apps to develop credible messages for combating racial prejudice against Asians.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Media trust and media use are correlated but conceptually different [ 38 ]. A worldwide survey showed that traditional news exposure correlated positively with trust in TV and newspapers, whereas online news use was negatively associated with trust in traditional media [ 39 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergroup Contact, COVID-19 News Consumption, and the Moderating Role of Digital Media Trust on Prejudice Toward Asians in the United States: Cross-Sectional Study

Tsai¹,

Phua²,

Pan³

et al. 2020

J Med Internet Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In addition to the media's ethical benefits, investments in transparency, explainability, and a solid relationship with the user could strengthen the media's position vis-à-vis its competitors in terms of the trust and loyalty of its readers and could showcase the distinction between the ways in which the legacy and social media use personalisation. Research from both the perspective of trust in the media and trust in the use of data suggests a modest relationship between trust and engagement (Curry & Stroud, 2019;Felzmann et al, 2019;Strömbäck et al, 2020). However, emerging research that combines the two perspectives by analysing how trust in the media is affected by its data usage suggests a more complex picture: although indiscriminate data collection may erode the media's trustworthiness, readers' assessment of the media's data collection disclosures is influenced by both their trust in the media organisation and in online data collection more generally (Sørensen & Van den Bulck, 2020;Steedman et al, 2020).…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations of news personalisation across countries and media types

Bastian¹,

Makhortykh²,

Harambam³

et al. 2020

Internet Policy Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

News outlets worldwide increasingly adopt user-and system-driven personalisation to individualise their news delivery. Yet, the technical implementation of news personalisation systems, in particular the one relying on algorithmic news recommenders (ANRs) and tailoring individual news suggestions with the help of user data, often remains opaque. In our article, we examine how news personalisation is used by quality and popular media in three countries with different media accountability infrastructures -Brazil, the Netherlands, and Russia -and investigate how information about personalisation usage is communicated to the news readers via privacy policies. Our findings point out that news personalisation systems are predominantly treated as black boxes that indicate a significant gap between practice and theory of algorithmic transparency, in particular in the non-EU context. Issue 4

show abstract

“…As such, the sources people choose to inform themselves about the world are of great concern. Factors such trust, habits, interests, political affiliation, personal experiences, and emotions can influence why we prefer some news providers over others (Carlson, 2017; Strömbäck et al, 2020). In this article we are particularly interested in audiences’ relationships to news media from an emotional perspective, and specifically how negative emotions of anger and fear can be used to investigate people’s relationship to the news media.…”

Section: Hostile Emotions Media Use and Political Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hostile emotions: An exploratory study of far-right online commenters and their emotional connection to traditional and alternative news media

Ihlebæk

Holter

2021

Journalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, we explore media use through the perspective of emotions. We specifically focus on a contested group of media users, namely those who engage in uncivil online behaviour and have had one or several comments deleted by moderators due to xenophobic and racist content. Our point of departure is that the informants represent a particularly engaged yet controversial audience. Based on theoretical perspectives on ‘hostile emotions’ like anger and fear and how the news media function as ‘emotional regimes’, we explore how the informants talk about their worldview and how it affects their media choices. We argue that political fear constitutes a powerful part of the informants’ narratives, which again influences their media use. Even though they are highly sceptical and suspicious, the participants in the study seek information from a wide selection of traditional and alternative sources where their worldview is both contested and confirmed. Furthermore, the strong fear expressed by informants constitute an important element of the anger they feel towards the established news media. This particular anger is structured around the notion of objective reporting that they consider highly provocative, both factually and emotionally, as it does not match how they experience the world around them.

show abstract

News media trust and its impact on media use: toward a framework for future research

Cited by 325 publications

References 80 publications

Intergroup Contact, COVID-19 News Consumption, and the Moderating Role of Digital Media Trust on Prejudice Toward Asians in the United States: Cross-Sectional Study

Intergroup Contact, COVID-19 News Consumption, and the Moderating Role of Digital Media Trust on Prejudice Toward Asians in the United States: Cross-Sectional Study

Explanations of news personalisation across countries and media types

Hostile emotions: An exploratory study of far-right online commenters and their emotional connection to traditional and alternative news media

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About