It is the same headline, just not as believable: The role of expectancy violations in perceptions about news attributed to multiple sources

Abstract

Expectancy violations play important roles as heuristics in communication processes, yet prior research has focused more on incongruence between (news) sources and messages rather than assessing expectation levels as a mechanism for variations in message believability. An online experiment indicated that news headline believability for both a prominent daily newspaper and a religion news wire service was largely determined by an interaction between source trust and the extent to which news consumers were surprised of the headline’s origin.

The Awkward Moment When You Agree With News Outlets That You Normally Distrust

“…Lee and Shin (2021) concluded that "(in)congruity of the message with the audience's preexisting attitudes seem to set the tone before any other considerations" (p. 4). Consequently, observed expectancy violations caused liberals to believe a news headline from a distrusted conservative news source more than a trusted liberal source, and vice versa (Blom, 2021b), which raised questions about the consequences for news selection of partisan news users: To what extent are people willing to select news from distrusted sources? And to what extent do expectancy violations play a role?…”

“…However, this is not always the case: Distrusted sources can be more persuasive than trusted sources, but mainly when messages are unexpected (Sternthal et al, 1978). Therefore, Republicans may consider some CNN headlines more believable than Democrats, and vice versa for Fox News, in particular when people are highly surprised by a headline's slant (Blom, 2021b).…”