The Consequences of Mistrust in the News Media: Media Skepticism as a Moderator in Media Effects and as a Factor Influencing News Media Exposure

Survey data show that audience trust in the institutions of the news media is fading. Most research to date has focused on the reasons for this decline in audience trust and ignored its outcomes. This dissertation seeks to explore the consequences of audience skepticism toward media institutions. Specifically, it hypothesizes that mistrust in the media serves as a moderator for media effects and as a factor influencing media exposure selections. Both propositions were tested on five separate large sample data sets, including the National Election Study of 19%, General Social Survey, and three additional studies conducted at the Anneberg School for Communication during the 19% and 2000 election years. The first proposition was tested in relation to news media agenda setting, spiral of silence, cultivation and priming effects. Findings show that media skepticism indeed moderated agenda setting and spiral of silence processes. Hypotheses about the moderating role of media skepticism in cultivation and priming were not supported. Tests of the second proposition regarding the influence of media skepticism on news exposure selections showed skepticism to be negatively related to exposure to iv mainstream news channels, but positively related to exposure to non-mainstream channels like Political Talk Radio and Internet news sources. Also, media skepticism interacted with need for cognition in their effects on mainstream media exposure, so that the effects of skepticism were stronger when need for cognition was low. Implications of the findings for media scholars, for journalists and for media literacy programs are discussed

What News Outlets do People Have in Mind When They Answer Survey Questions about Trust in "Media?"

While ample research on audience trust in the news media uses survey questions that ask respondents about their trust in a generic "news media,"only scant research has investigated what types of news outlets respondents have in mind when answering such questions. These previous investigations originated mostly in the US and resulted in inconsistent findings. To further investigate this question, we use data from a large-scale survey (N=2,337), collected in Sweden, including both general media trust measures and specific measures about trust in 20 mainstream and nonmainstream news outlets. The results demonstrate that our respondents seemingly averaged across all mainstream sources when they formed their general evaluations of the news media's trustworthiness

What does fake look like? A review of the literature on intentional deception in the news and on social media

This paper focuses on the content features of intentional deceptive information in the news (i.e., fake news) and on social media. Based on an extensive review of relevant literature (i.e., political journalism and communication, computational linguistics), we take stock of existing knowledge and present an overview of the structural characteristics that are indicative of intentionally deceptive information. We discuss the strength of underlying empirical evidence and identify underdeveloped areas of research. With this paper, we aim to contribute to the systematic study of intentional deception in the news and on social media and to help setting up new lines of research in which intentionally deceptive news items can be operationalized in consistent ways

Pathways to fatherhood: psychological well-being among Israeli gay fathers through surrogacy, gay fathers through previous heterosexual relationships, and heterosexual fathers

This study explored differences in psychological well-being as assessed by life satisfaction, parenthood satisfaction, depressive symptoms and the Big Five personality dimensions among 219 Israeli fathers; 76 gay men who had become fathers through a heterosexual relationship, 63 gay men who had become fathers through surrogacy, and 78 heterosexual men. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, gay fathers through surrogacy reported greater satisfaction with parenthood, greater satisfaction with their lives, and reported higher levels of extraversion when compared to heterosexual fathers. No significant differences emerged between the three groups on depressive symptoms, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience. These findings emphasize the predominant similarities and some possible differences on psychological well-being between the different paths to fatherhood. This study is one of the first to compare several paths to fatherhood on psychological well-being, thus illuminating the contribution of fatherhood route to psychological well-being in an era where gay men are increasingly becoming fathers in diverse ways

Will they come and will they stay? Online Social Networks and news consumption on external websites

This study explores the role of online engagement, homophily and social influence in explaining traffic and news consumption by social network users at an external news website. The authors jointly model visits and page views for a panel of users who registered with the news site using their Facebook accounts. In their model, the authors account for homophily using a latent space approach, and account for endogeneity, heterogeneity, and unobservable correlates. The results show that measures of an individual’s activity on Facebook are positively associated with that individual’s actions at the news site. In addition, knowing what a user’s Facebook friends do at the content website provides insights into a focal user’s behavior at that website, as visitors with friends who visit external news sites are more likely to visit the news website studied. In addition, news consumption (not just visits) also depends on friend’s actions but such an impact varies with the individual’s underlying browsing mode. We highlight the importance of social influence in news consumption and further show that homophily bias in news consumption is similar to prior research in other categories. Our study also highlights that visitors’ past browsing patterns are important predictors of future content consumption, although social network information significantly improves prediction beyond the effect of such more traditional behavioral metrics. Finally, we find that Managers can use readily available data for both prediction and targeting

Selective Exposure to Berita Harian Online and Utusan Malaysia Online: The Roles of Surveillance Motivation, Website Usability and Website Attractiveness

News media allows audiences to be selective in determining both their news sources and type of news stories they read. This study examined factors influencing selective exposure to the online editions of two mainstream Malaysian newspapers, Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia. Using selective exposure theory as the theoretical lens, this study compared both newspapers in terms of their audiences’ level of surveillance motivation, and how audiences rate the newspapers’ websites with respect to usability and attractiveness. This study used a within-subject experimental research design that exposed 51 subjects to both Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia online newspapers. The results of the experiment indicate that Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia online were significantly different in terms of website usability; however, no significant differences were found in terms of surveillance motivation or website attractiveness between the two newspapers. Further analysis indicate that the only significant predictor of selective exposure was website usability. This study highlights the importance of website usability for online newspapers wanting to harness audience selectivity

Information and Arena: The Dual Function of the News Media for Political Elites

Abstract: How do individual politicians use the news media to reach their political goals? This study addresses the question by proposing an actor-centered, functional approach. We distinguish 2 essential functions (and subfunctions) the mass media have for political elites. The media are a source of information; politicians depend on it for pure information and they can profit from the momentum generated by media information. The media also are an arena elites need access to in order to promote themselves and their issues. These 2 functions offer certain politicians a structural advantage over others and, hence, are relevant for the power struggle among political elites. A systematic functional account enables comparisons of the role of the media across politicians and political systems