Trust in Media Revisited: On Theorizing and Measuring Young People's Trust in News and Information Sources

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Authors

ŽÁDNÍK Štěpán MACEK Jakub MACKOVÁ Alena

Year of publication 2017
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
Citation
Description Current young audiences receive news content under challenging circumstances – increasing preference of online media, multiplication of available and consumed news and information sources as well as polarization of opinion climate create a specific, novel conditions under which young people construct and experience news media as trustworthy. Among others, this puts in question the usual, for decades used methods of survey-based measuring of trust in media – with fragmentation of the online news environment, it appears that indicating media trustworthiness through addressing media types (TV, press, radio, internet) as monolithic entities turns to be problematic both in terms of validity and sensitivity. This presentation – drawing on research supported by Fulbright Commission and, in particular, on qualitative data from a pilot study into the topic – reviews existing recent studies on the topic and findings from our qualitative inquiry that included 30 respondents (with half of them aged 18-30). On this basis, the presentation proposes theoretically and methodologically revisited approach to trust in media aiming to fit more accurately the experience and practices of current (and specifically young) news audiences.
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