Perceptions of Media Performance: Expectation-Evaluation Discrepancies and Their Relationship with Media-related and Populist Attitudes

Abstract

Public criticism of professional media is omnipresent in many democratic societies. This debate has often been examined concerning what the audience demands from the media (expectations) or how they evaluate media performance (evaluations). Based on a representative, quota-based online survey of the German population in 2019, this study examines citizens’ expectations, evaluations, and the discrepancies between both, as well as their relationship with media trust, socio-political predispositions—particularly populist attitudes—and individual media use in high-choice media environments. Results show that citizens have high expectations of the media which they mainly do not see fulfilled and that expectation-evaluation discrepancies are related to lower media trust in the case of particularly important and/or most noticeably underperformed media functions. Both expectations and evaluations were associated with populist attitudes, but only in the case of anti-elite attitudes in such a way that increased expectations collide with negative media evaluations. For anti-outgroup attitudes, instead, the analyses show a generally negative assessment of journalistic media, both in terms of expectations and evaluations. Media use does only play a minor role.

Audience expectations of journalism: What’s politics got to do with it?

“….] it was because people felt that their expectations of the news were not shared by news producers.” In line with that, a recent study by Fawzi and Mothes (2020) found that a higher discrepancy between audience expectation of journalism concerning several core functions and their evaluation of its actual performance was negatively correlated with media trust.…”

The Informational Consequences of Populism: Social Media News Use and “News Finds Me” Perception

“…First, social media facilitates that people connect with like-minded individuals (Wells et al, 2020). Second, social media use speaks well to the dichotomy of people-elites, as it enables an informative space that is not so constrained by the agenda of mainstream media, often distrusted by populist individuals (Fawzi, 2019;Fawzi & Mothes, 2020;Schulz et al, 2020). Third, populist politicians are often thought to use social media more systematically.…”

“…First, regarding the instrumental and peer-reliance dimension of NFM, we expect that individuals with stronger populist attitudes will be more likely to agree with the NFM idea that they can rely on their peers to be well-informed. This is so because individuals displaying strong populist attitudes perceive the existence of a homogeneous and kind-hearted group of people that, just like them, are opposed to evil elites, and are more likely to distrust mainstream media (Fawzi, 2019;Fawzi & Mothes, 2020;Schulz et al, 2020). Second, and tapping into the epistemic (being well-informed) and motivational (not-seeking) dimensions of NFM, we expect that individuals who agree with the Manichean and schematic understanding of politics inherent to populism will also resonate more strongly with the assumption that good/complete information is attainable without looking up for it at all.…”

Audience Views on Professional Norms of Journalism. A Media Repertoire Approach

“…This idealized view of the press as an institution that operates independently from private and political interests and tries to hold power to account is central to many journalists' self-conception (Palmer et al 2020). Due to journalism's central role in society, it feels obliged to adhere to these high standards (Fawzi and Mothes 2020). Research has mainly focused on the professional role and norms of journalists from a production perspective (Hanitzsch and Vos 2018;Hanusch 2019;Hanusch and Hanitzsch 2017); audience views and opinions stay for a large part in the shadows (Tandoc and Duffy 2016).…”