Description
In the era of ambient news and misinformation, there is a growing public debate over what media sources can be trusted and why. This study proposes that public evaluations of journalists’ performance are positively associated with trust in traditional media (H1a) and trust in alternative media (H1b). We further look into the so-called “news finds me” perception (NFM) –– a belief that one may remain well-informed about current events without actively seeking the news by relying on social-networks. We argue people’s NFM is negatively associated with traditional media trust (H2a) and positively associated with alternative media trust (H2b). Moreover, NFM should moderate the positive relationship between evaluations of journalists’ performance and traditional media trust in a transverse positive contributory model (H3a), and the positive relationship between evaluations of journalists’ performance and alternative media trust in a divergent positive contributory model (H3b). Drawing on a nationally representative survey collected in the USA in 2015 (N = 1161), this study performs two sets of hierarchical ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions for each dependent variable and implements PROCESS macro model 1 to test moderations. We control for traditional media news use, alternative media news use, political self-efficacy, political interest, political discussion online, political discussion offline, social media use frequency, network size, strength of ideology, age, gender, education, income, and race. We find 1) public evaluations of journalists’ performance are positively associated with trust in both traditional and alternative media; 2) “NFM” perception is positively related to trust in alternative media but not related to traditional media trust; 3) “NFM” perception moderates the positive relationship between evaluations of journalists’ performance and traditional media trust in a transverse positive contributory model: the highest trust in traditional media is observed among those who have high evaluations of journalists’ performance and low "NFM" perception.| Period | 7 Oct 2020 |
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| Event title | WAPOR 2020 73rd Annual Conference |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Lincoln, NE, United StatesShow on map |