Populist attitudes and politicians’ disinformation accusations: effects on perceptions of media and politicians

Abstract

Populist politicians increasingly accuse opposing media of spreading disinformation or “fake news.” However, empirical research on the effects of these accusations is scarce. This survey experiment (N = 1,330) shows that disinformation accusations reduce audience members’ trust in the accused news outlet and perceived accuracy of the news message, while trust in the accusing politician is largely unaffected. However, only individuals with strong populist attitudes generalize disinformation accusations to the media as an institution and reduce their general media trust. The phrase “fake news” does not amplify any of these effects. These findings suggest that politicians can undermine the credibility of journalism without much repercussion—a mechanism that might also threaten other authoritative information sources in democracies such as scientists and health authorities.

The (Un)Intended Consequences of Emphasizing the Threats of Mis- and Disinformation

“…Yet, talking about disinformation and its threats may not only have positive ramifications. In line with this, accusations of disinformation are found to result in lower levels of trust in the media or factually accurate information (e.g., Egelhofer et al, 2022;Van Duyn & Collier, 2019), which illustrates that mis-and disinformation used as delegitimizing labels may negatively impact trust in factually accurate information.…”

The Student-to-Journalist Pipeline: Attitudes, Motivations, and Expressed Likelihood of Choosing a Journalism Career

“…This is concerning since media skepticism is currently rampant across the country and throughout society (Park et al, 2020). This may be due to an increase in public attacks, and amplification of those attacks through both traditional and social media, on specific news media outlets, individual journalists, and journalism in general by political officials (Egelhofer, 2023; Kellner, 2018; Meeks, 2022) and members of the public.…”

“…Yet, in the United States, the profession of principled journalism and journalists themselves have been under a sustained and continued attack that began during the Nixon administration and reached new levels of intensity during the presidency of Donald Trump (Kellner, 2018; Sulzberger, 2019). The attacks continue to this day (Egelhofer, 2023; Meeks, 2022) and may be contributing to distrust in the media and declining interest in the profession of journalism.…”

How Politicians’ Attacks on Science Communication Influence Public Perceptions of Journalists and Scientists

“…However, suppose we had tested the effects of attacks on the perceptions of a specific journalist/scientist (e.g., the author of the news article or scientific study at hand). In that case, the results might have been different (see Egelhofer et al, 2022). Individuals tend to make quick character judgments based on little information about unknown actors.…”

“…As outlined before, citizens are likely quite susceptible to disinformation accusations and, thus, potentially misled in their assessment of the accuracy of accused information. Indeed, initial studies show that when disinformation accusations accompany news stories on social media, citizens perceive discredited news content as less accurate (e.g., Egelhofer et al, 2022). Furthermore, citizens who feel disinformed about scientific issues are likely less willing to conform to policies based on scientific evidence (Hameleers et al, 2020).…”