Motivierte Zweifel. Wie die Voreinstellungen der Rezipienten zum Berichterstattungsgegenstand ihre Wahrnehmung der Medienglaubwürdigkeit beeinflussen

Abstract

Right-wing populist groups’ accusations of a ‘lying’ press and the increasing fear of the effects of fake news on public opinion formation give rise to the question of how trust in the news media can be explained. Social psychological theories such as the Hostile Media Effect or the idea of Motivated Reasoning suggest that recipients perceive media coverage as trustworthy, if it is in line with their own predispositions, regardless of notions of accuracy and balance. In an online experiment, we tested the influence of pre-existing attitudes on media trust by using the issue of climate change as a case study. Participants were exposed to news articles that either dramatized or downplayed the consequences of climate change. As we expected, participants indeed perceive news articles as more trustworthy if the facts displayed are in line with their own attitudes towards climate change. This is particularly true in the case of recipients with extreme attitudes.