Mainstream Media Recirculation of Trust-Reducing Social Media Messages

• Author: John A. Curiel,John Lovett,Devin J. Christensen
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211023931
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X211023931

American Politics Research

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X211023931

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Article

Introduction

In order for democratic institutions to function, people need

to trust in them (Gamson, 1968; Hetherington, 2005;

Hetherington & Husser, 2012; Levi, 1998; Kampen et al.,

2006; Misztal, 2001; Sabel, 1993). The news media is one

democratic institution that enables citizens to learn about

their officials’ behavior in office and later hold them account-

able for that behavior in the ballot box (Liebes & Ribak,

1991; Tsfati & Cohen, 2005). As such, trust in the news

media as a free, independent, and reliable source of political

information is critical for protecting democracy (Blöbaum,

2014; Müller, 2013; Paisana et al., 2020). However,

Americans are increasingly turning away from legacy news

media outlets toward social media as a primary source for

political news (Mitchell et al., 2020; Oeldorf-Hirsch et al.,

2020; Oliphant, 2020), a development that threatens to erode

trust in legacy news media, increase partisan polarization,

and decrease engagement in the democratic process.

As users turn to social media for their news, they encoun-

ter more ideologically polarized and less factual messages,

partially as a result of their own seeking behaviors and par-

tially due to the non-content-neutral sorting and searching

algorithms that select the content users see (Cardenal,

Aguilar-Paredes, et al., 2019). When viewers encounter ideo-

logically-confirmatory information, they are less likely to

validate it (Edgerly et al., 2020; Edgerly & Vraga, 2020), and

when they encounter ideologically-disconfirmatory informa-

tion, they are more likely to respond by doubling down on

ideologically polarized beliefs and doubting the credibility

of the message’s source (Anderson & Auxier, 2020; Feldman

et al., 2020; Levendusky, 2013; Slothuus & de Vreese, 2010;

Taber & Lodge, 2006). Furthermore, social media platforms

can be infiltrated by many groups with antidemocratic goals,

including authoritarians who harass and censor information

(Tucker et al., 2017), foreign states who use troll farms and

fake accounts to foment discontent (Jayamaha & Matisek,

2019), and domestic users who spread antimedia rhetoric

that calls into question the validity of traditional news report-

ing (Strömbäck et al., 2020). Social media corporations con-

tribute by exacerbating these hostile behaviors with

demonstrably inconsistent applications of community stan-

dards (Smith, 2020) and counterproductive content warning

labels (Oeldorf-Hirsch et al., 2020; Vogels et al., 2020). All

of these forces jointly contribute to decreased trust in legacy

news reporting among social media users.

1023931APRXXX10.1177/1532673X211023931American Politics ResearchChristensen et al.

research-article2021

1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

2Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

3Ohio Northern University, Ada, USA

Corresponding Author:

Devin J. Christensen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 361

Pauli Murray Hall, CB 3265, Chapel Hill, NC 27515, USA.

Email: djc2020@unc.edu

Mainstream Media Recirculation of

Trust-Reducing Social Media Messages

Devin J. Christensen1, John Lovett2,

and John A. Curiel3

Abstract

Citizens need to trust in the integrity of news reporting for the free press to fulfill its role as a democratic institution that

enables citizens to hold representatives accountable. Growing research has shown that increased use of social media erodes

trust in legacy news. However, trust-reducing social media messages are not contained to social media platforms; they are

widely recirculated by the mainstream media. We argue that mainstream media corporations select social media messages

to recirculate precisely because of their trust-reducing features in order to respond to short-term competitive market

incentives. We turn to Donald Trump’s Twitter posts as examples of trust-reducing messages and show that the media cites

more trust-reducing messages more quickly and more frequently than less trust-reducing messages. These findings implicate

mainstream media corporations alongside social media platforms in the systematic and ongoing degradation of trust in legacy

news reporting.

Keywords

social media, democracy, trust, authoritarianism, outrage, political communication

2022, Vol. 50(2) 213 –226