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

Abstract

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.

Advancing a qualitative turn in news media trust research

“…Relying on the folk theories framework and focusing on the US context, Wilner et al (2021) found that while their focus group participants "articulated a desire for active journalists to provide evidence for the larger truths in a story, they also seem to seek a more passive approach, as they perceived a story as biased if it contained facts or context they perceived as unnecessary" (12). In short, they described a kind of journalism that seems impossible to achieve but that gains meaning when seen from the interviewees' perspectives (see also Nelson & Lewis, 2021). Recently, adopting several qualitative research methods, Bozdağ and Koçer (2022) have found that, in the highly polarized context of Turkey, evaluating political news can sometimes be more an assessment of the political position of the source than an assessment of the accuracy of the news content: in sum, people believe in "what feels closer to them" (p. 173).…”

“…In other words, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the narratives through which people give meaning to the lived experience of journalism. This clearly requires a qualitative focus on what people bring to the news and not only on what news brings to them (Nelson & Lewis, 2021).…”

The structures that shape news consumption: Evidence from the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This study thus examines how people approached news coverage at a time when day-to-day life disruptions caused by the pandemic were just beginning and may have been at their most salient for many people. In doing so, it joins a growing body of journalism studies research drawing on data during the early phase of the coronavirus pandemic to examine ongoing, global issues pertaining to news production and consumption ( Mellado et al, 2021 ; Nelson & Lewis, 2021 ; Poole & Williamson, 2021 ; Quandt & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2021 ; Van Aelst et al, 2021 ) Our overarching research questions were as follows:…”

Trust in Local Cybermedia News Coverage In Lampung Province

“…Some news brandstypically those that have been around a long timeare often seen as main sources of news, whereas new playerseven if they have a large reachare thought of as secondary sources or 'guilty pleasures' (Newman, et al, 2016). The importance of this trust assessment has led some researchers to involve students in their measurements because trust in journalism is very closely related to the "listening literacy" of their readers (Robinson et al, 2021), the self-perception of readers (Nelson & Lewis, 2021) and how they consume cyber media (Swart & Broersma (2021). It can be said that readers' trust in cyber media will determine the fate of the cyber media itself.…”