Media Trust and News Consumption in the Illiberal Public Sphere

Abstract

Chapter 4 examines how the patterns of news consumption outlined in the previous chapter relate to media trust. We start by providing a multi-layered mapping of media trust across the four countries, paying attention not just to the more commonly investigated generalized levels of media trust but also trust in individual news brands. We argue that in a context where generalized media trust declines, people adopt a pragmatic approach to media trust, seeking to follow news sources that may not be completely trustworthy, but nonetheless offer a more credible account than others. Second, we examine the relationship between media trust and news consumption and investigate why people consume media they distrust. Finally, we consider how citizens establish which media are trustworthy. The results suggest that in a context where the illiberal public sphere assumes a dominant position, the normative foundations of media trust start shifting, ultimately leading citizens to place trust in media not because they offer impartial or accurate coverage of public affairs, but because they provide an account of reality they personally agree with or—in the extreme case—because their account of reality is aligned with the one promoted by those in power.

Media trust is often highlighted as a key factor underpinning the quality of public deliberation and the quality of democracy more generally (Thorbjørnsrud & Figenschou, 2022; Tsfati & Cohen, 2005). Existing research on media and trust also tends to assume that trust is the key element driving news consumption—that is, that people primarily follow news sources they trust. In this context, several scholars have expressed concerns about the steady decline in news media trust in several Western democracies (Gronke & Cook, 2007; Newman et al., 2019) and pointed out that this decline is leading people to turn to alternative, often partisan sources, thereby contributing to attitudinal polarization (Jamieson & Cappella, 2008; Ladd, 2011). However, much of this research operates within a context where the media are still relatively independent and professional, and where distrust is fuelled by political actors who seek to gain legitimacy by undermining the credibility of what are still, by and large, relatively trustworthy sources of information. In such a context, generalized media trust is—from a democratic perspective—an unambiguously good thing, as well as something worth defending and preserving. In contrast, generalized media distrust is justifiably seen as harmful to democracy, especially if it is driven by what Quiring et al. (2021) have called ‘dysfunctional cynicism’ (p. 3497)—that is, if it is based on unsubstantiated assumptions about the malevolent, flawed nature of media in general, often associated with beliefs in a conspiratorial alliance between political and media actors.

However, in some of the countries examined in this book, such assumptions about the democratic desirability of media trust, and about the harmfulness of media distrust, no longer make sense. As evident from the previous chapter, the advancing illiberal public sphere, and the growing polarization of media landscapes in two of the countries—Hungary and Serbia—has by now reached such a degree that balanced, politically neutral media has virtually disappeared. To make matters worse, most news media privilege only one side of the ideological and political spectrum, meaning that the media systems in these two countries are not only polarized but also very asymmetrical, with only very few outlets adopting a liberal, anti-government perspective on current affairs. To put it differently, this means that most of the media in these two countries have become genuinely untrustworthy, and media trust is no longer an unambiguously positive thing. Rather than being a cause for concern, a low level of media trust could instead be a welcome sign, indicating that citizens are potentially still able to recognize biased, unreliable media coverage, and perhaps even identify alternative, more trustworthy sources.

Yet, as the evidence presented in this chapter indicates, such optimistic conclusions may not be fully warranted. While low levels of media trust do go hand in hand with critical attitudes to mainstream news, and often lead people to consume ideologically and politically diverse news sources, this does not necessarily mean that they are able to find trustworthy alternatives. In this respect, our conclusions echo the findings of a small but growing body of research on audiences in heavily polarized environments, such as Ukraine, South-eastern Europe, or the Baltic countries (Pasitselska, 2022; Pjesˇivac et al., 2016; Szostek, 2017; Vihalemm & Juzefovičs, 2021, 2023), as well as in semi-authoritarian and authoritarian environments, including China and Russia (Alyukov, 2021, 2022, 2023; Mickiewicz, 2005; Oates, 2006; Szostek, 2018). This literature shows that distrust of mainstream media drives audiences to alternative sources of information, including non-media sources and personal experience, as a means of evaluating news credibility. At the same time, they also reveal that engagement with alternative sources does not necessarily help citizens evaluate information critically. Rather, it can also reinforce beliefs in messages coming from untrustworthy, propagandistic sources, leading to what Joanna Szostek (2018) aptly calls the ‘paradox of dis/belief’ (p. 68)—namely, that audiences in such environments might distrust mainstream media and avoid propagandistic outlets, yet at the same time continue to believe in propagandistic messages circulated by such outlets because they resonate with those found in alternative sources or echo personal experiences and opinions of trusted others. This paradox of ‘believing the message while disbelieving the messenger’ (Szostek, 2018, p. 81) has been confirmed by other studies (Vihalemm & Juzefovičs, 2021; Alyukov, 2023) and means that propaganda and misinformation can remain influential even in contexts where citizens recognize the bias of mainstream news channels and deliberately seek exposure to alternative sources of information.

In this chapter, we take a step further than these studies by providing a more fine-grained breakdown of media trust and its relationship with news consumption, using a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data to compare the status of media trust in the four countries we examine. First, our approach is not limited to the analysis of the more commonly investigated generalized levels of media trust—that is, trust in news media as an institution. Rather, it acknowledges multiple levels of media trust (cf. Fawzi et al., 2021; Strömbäck et al., 2020), paying attention to trust in individual news brands. This approach allows us to tackle the understudied question of the relationship between different levels of media trust (Strömbäck et al., 2020) and investigate what happens with trust in individual news brands when generalized media trust declines. Borrowing from Christian Schwarzenegger’s (2020) work on personal epistemologies of media use, we argue that, in a context where generalized media trust declines, people adopt a pragmatic approach to media trust, seeking to follow news sources that may not be completely trustworthy but nonetheless offer a more credible account than others. Second, we examine the relationship between media trust and news consumption and use qualitative data to situate media trust vis-à-vis multiple other determinants that shape news consumption. Here, we seek to engage with previous research that investigated why people consume media they distrust and query normative models of citizenship that assume news consumption is driven solely by rational aims, such as information-seeking (cf. Swart & Broersma, 2021; Tsfati & Cappella, 2005).

Finally, we use mixed methods to examine how citizens establish which media are trustworthy. The patterns we find challenge tacit assumptions that link media trust to universal criteria of trustworthiness such as independence, impartiality, or objectivity. As our analysis shows, even if people routinely refer to such seemingly universal criteria when justifying their news choices, the way they interpret them can vary widely, opening doors for trusting rather biased, openly partisan and propagandistic media. This is particularly clear when looking at interpretations of media independence, which is not necessarily assessed in terms of independence from political or commercial interference, but rather in terms of independence from foreign powers, the political mainstream, or editorial control. These results suggest that, in a context where the illiberal public sphere assumes a dominant position, the normative foundations of media trust shift, ultimately leading citizens to place trust in media not because they offer impartial or accurate coverage of public affairs, but because they provide an account of reality they personally agree with or—in the extreme case—because their account of reality is aligned with the one promoted by those in power.

4.1 From General Media Trust to Trust in Individual News Brands

Media trust is commonly investigated at a general or institutional level, by means of surveys that inquire on people’s trust in ‘the media’ in general. Such an approach offers important insights and, alongside the inclusion of general questions on media trust in major surveys, such as the Eurobarometer, the Edelman Trust Survey, or the World Values Survey, offers the opportunity for both longitudinal and transnational comparisons. Nonetheless, several authors have noted its drawbacks, including its inability to capture the variations in trust across individual news brands (Fawzi et al., 2021; Strömbäck et al., 2020). Seeking to address these drawbacks, our survey combines the measurement of general levels of media trust with the measurement of trust of ten individual news brands in each of the examined countries. In addition, we also investigate the link between media trust and media use, seeking to establish whether, and to what extent, higher trust in individual news brands corresponds with higher frequency of use.

Starting with general levels of media trust, all four countries display low levels of trust. Even in the Czech Republic, where trust levels are highest, only 34.8% of participants trust media in general, with the number dropping to only 13.9% and 10.7% in Hungary and Serbia (Fig. 4.1). These results stand in stark contrast to media trust in many other European countries, especially in Scandinavia, where over half of the population trusts the media (Newman et al., 2023). Despite comparatively low levels of media trust in all four countries, we should also highlight significant cross-country variations, with media distrust significantly higher in Hungary and Serbia than in Poland and the Czech Republic. While as many as 65.4% of the respondents in Hungary and 70.9% in Serbia stated that they do not trust the media, only around 43% did so in Poland and the Czech Republic. As Hungary and Serbia are the two countries where the illiberal public sphere reached the hegemonic stage, these results suggest that the advance of the illiberal public sphere might go hand in hand with the decline in general levels of media trust. Although we should be wary of inferring longitudinal developments based on cross-sectional data, existing longitudinal polls support this interpretation, showing a decline in media trust between 2016 and 2023 in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary (Newman et al., 2023).¹ Furthermore, the link between the advance of the illiberal public sphere and the decline in media trust is also consistent with existing work on media trust and polarization, which likewise suggests that advancing polarization goes hand in hand with lower media trust (see Hanitzsch et al., 2018).

Fig. 4.1

Trust in news media (general)

However, low general levels of media trust in Hungary and Serbia do not mean that people distrust all media equally, nor do relatively high levels of media trust in Poland and the Czech Republic mean that all news brands in those countries are seen as equally trustworthy. Rather, in all four countries, general levels of media trust hide significant variations in trust between individual news brands (Fig. 4.2). As Schwarzenegger (2020) argues, media trust is pragmatic—namely, citizens can be sceptical of the media to varying degrees yet choose to trust selected sources for pragmatic reasons. The range of variation in trust is particularly notable in the Czech Republic, as evident from the distance between the most highly trusted outlets in the country, public service radio (Czech Radio—Radiožurnál) and television (Czech Television—Česká televize, CT) channels, and the least trusted medium, the tabloid Blesk. In the other three countries, and especially in Hungary and Serbia, the range of variation is considerably smaller. Another interesting pattern relates to the relative positions of commercial and public service broadcasters. In the Czech Republic, public service radio and television are by far the most trusted, while the most widely followed commercial broadcasters occupy the middle of the spectrum. In Poland and Hungary, the reverse is true: commercial broadcasters, such as TVN, Polsat, and RMF FM in Poland, and RTL Klub in Hungary, command the highest levels of trust, with public service brands including MTV and Kossuth Radio in Hungary and TVP and Polish Radio (Polskie Radio) fall around the middle of the spectrum. Finally, in Serbia, the commercial, oppositional TV channel N1 enjoys the highest levels of trust but is closely followed by the public broadcaster Radio-television Serbia (Radio-televizija Srbije, RTS), and the commercial pro-government broadcaster Prva, with the other major commercial broadcasters (Pink and Happy) much further down the spectrum.

Fig. 4.2

Trust in individual news media brands

Another key finding evident in Fig. 4.2 is that low levels of trust are not necessarily an obstacle to news consumption—a fact that is easily overlooked if one focuses only on the overall positive association with trust. As the size of ‘bubbles’ associated with individual brands in Fig. 4.2 indicates, some of the brands with largest audiences, such as public service broadcasters TVP in Poland or the commercial channel TV Nova in the Czech Republic, are found around the middle of the trust spectrum. Indeed, in some cases, even brands close to or at the bottom of the trust scale command relatively large audiences, with the most notable examples being the tabloid Kurir in Serbia and Radio Maryja in Poland. These findings suggest that significant numbers of citizens in the four countries may follow news media they do not find particularly trustworthy or even choose to consume sources they actively distrust.

These results run counter to the normative ideal of informed citizens who rationally consume only sources they trust (cf. Swart & Broersma, 2021) and challenge arguments that assume news consumption to be driven primarily by the desire to obtain accurate information about current affairs (cf. Tsfati & Cappella, 2003). As Tsfati and Cappella (2005) argue, ‘obtaining accurate and objective information is just one motivation for watching the news’ (p. 254). Indeed, the patterns we see in our data suggest that news consumption may be shaped by a variety of other factors, including other needs—from diversion and entertainment to specific social identity needs—as well as less instrumental factors, such as force of habit and routine (cf. Rubin, 1984; Strömbäck et al., 2020; Tsfati & Cappella, 2005). In addition to these, the specific media environments we deal with here—especially in the case of Serbia and Hungary—require us to consider how the link between trust and news consumption might shift when illiberalism and polarization increase, and when mainstream media become increasingly biased and untrustworthy—that is, in environments where people may simply have no choice but pay attention to media they distrust.

4.2 Why Do People Consume Media They Distrust?

To investigate what might explain people’s tendency to, at least on occasion, consume media they distrust, we asked selected survey participants—thirty on average in each of the countries—to explain why they consume the news sources they do, using both qualitative interviews and media diaries over a period of three weeks. Their responses confirmed that trust, while important, is not the only and, sometimes, not even the main consideration that guides news consumption choices. In addition to media trust, several other reasons were mentioned. Most common among these were convenience, habit, contextual restrictions linked to family, household or working environments, and the desire to get access to a diversity of views.

Convenience mostly referred to a particularly straightforward way of accessing a specific news source and was associated primarily with digital news consumption, although the specific devices used and modes of accessing digital news varied. Smartphones were particularly often mentioned in this context, chiefly because of their portability and adaptability. As a Czech participant explained: ‘The smartphone is fast, practical, and I have it always with me … when I’m on a bus, streetcar, train, or even in the bathroom’ (Cze-10, male, 41). Encountering news on smartphones as a result of push notifications or through social media feeds was also often associated with convenience, reflecting the importance of accidental news exposure for contemporary, digital news consumption patterns. For instance, A Serbian participant explained that she keeps reading news about elections—even those she may not want to see—because of push notifications from Google News, noting that ‘Google keeps pushing news about election onto me. I might not want to read them, but they keep imposing themselves on me’ (Srb-23, female, 60+). Similarly, a Hungarian participant explained that he consumed the pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet more than other sources because he encountered it more often on Facebook (Hun-15, male, 38). Given that existing research has confirmed that online news consumption has the capacity to expose citizens to cross-cutting debates, including views they may disagree with or sources they distrust (e.g. Guo & Chen, 2022; Lu & Lee, 2018; Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009), it is feasible to infer that convenience of access—insofar as it leads citizens to rely on online news sources, especially via social media platforms—could be an important factor contributing to engagement with news sources one distrusts.

That said, the link between convenience of access and news exposure is not limited to online news consumption. Some of the participants mentioned convenience as a factor in choosing broadcast media. Typically, this was because broadcast media—especially radio, but also television—were seen as more compatible with other activities such as driving or household duties. As a Serbian participant explained, ‘I turn on the TV when I’m in the middle of something, so I can at least listen to what they are saying’ (Srb-27, female, 60+). For some users, news received through analogue media and especially TV was seen as more convenient than accessing news through their smartphones, because it was believed to require less effort. To the question of why she preferred to follow TV news, one of our Czech participants explained: ‘Because I like to sit in my living room and turn the TV on to relax. When you use your phone, you must search for the news. But when you turn the TV set on with your remote, it’s immediately there’ (Cze-21, female, 56). Instances where convenience was associated with analogue media were almost exclusively mentioned by older participants, suggesting that long-standing habits—another factor frequently mentioned as important in influencing news consumption choices—likely play a role in shaping people’s perceptions of what is convenient. Arguably, for older users, sticking to one’s established news routines and devices may simply be more convenient than changing them and getting used to different (digital) devices and routines. In media systems where illiberal governments have progressively taken control over broadcast and print media, forcing oppositional outlets to the digital sphere or limiting public access by excluding them from most convenient cable TV packages, such convenience-led consumption can also inadvertently push citizens into consuming media they distrust.

Another factor that occasionally drove participants to follow sources they distrusted was habit. In contrast to convenience, which was often used to explain preferences for a particular device—for instance, smartphones or the radio—habit was most often associated with specific news brands and programmes. For instance, writing in her media diary, a Polish participant explained her choice of watching the morning news programme on a commercial TV channel as an integral part of her routine on her days off. She wrote: ‘Today is my day off. Like every day off, in the morning, I drink coffee and watch morning TV, usually Good morning TVN’ (Pol-28, media diary on March 9, female, 49). Importantly, the consumption of public service TV news bulletins was often associated with particularly longstanding routines. For example, a Hungarian participant explained his preference for the pro-government public service TV channel M1 with reference to an enduring daily routine that remained unchanged for decades: ‘Then I sit down, eat my breakfast, and watch TV. It has been like that for around two decades …. Always, always M1’ (Hun-10, male, 75). Several other participants, especially from Hungary and Serbia, described their preferences for following the news bulletins on public broadcasting channels in similar terms, as an enduring routine or even ‘tradition’, which they occasionally traced back to their childhoods. The following quote from an interview with a Serbian participant, mentioning the public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) provides a case in point:

And every night at 7:30p.m. I watch the news on RTS [laughs]. I’ve been doing this since I was born, it’s sort of a tradition for me. I feel like it’s a necessary part of our lives and our childhoods, and that’s why we use it to keep ourselves informed. I don’t think it’s objective or better than the rest, but all in all, we do get the information that we need. (Srb-24, female, 26)

The above example is particularly interesting because it explicitly addresses the disjunction between habits and news quality and even presents it as part and parcel of more widely shared, collective news consumption habits. The participant notes that she continues to consume the RTS news bulletin out of habit, even though she does not consider it objective or better than other sources. Furthermore, by using the deictic references ‘we’ and ‘our’, she frames this news habit as something that is shared by other Serbian citizens, constituting part of ‘our lives and our childhoods’. Also worth noting is her final point about how, by consuming this news bulletin, ‘we get the information that we need’, which implies that the news provided by RTS is somehow useful despite its lack of objectivity.

Among other factors that contributed to the consumption of distrusted sources were contextual restrictions. These came in two main forms. On the one hand, several participants mentioned following specific news sources because of other household members or when visiting older relatives. In some cases, this meant following news associated with political or ideological orientations close to those of our participants. An example is provided by a 36-years-old Hungarian participant who listened to news on the oppositional radio channel when visiting her mother who shares her political views. She explained: ‘Klubrádió plays some role because my mother also does not really support the current government and Klubrádió is always on in her kitchen. Even if I don’t want to hear it, I do…’ (Hun-22, female, 36). In other cases, however, this meant being forced to contend with news sources one disagrees with, as was the case, among others, with an 18-year-old Hungarian participant who ‘sadly’ had to watch the pro-government MTV while visiting his grandparents. (Hun-20, male, 18)

Another common category of contextual restrictions was associated with the workplace and with one’s commute to work. Here, contextual limitations often overlapped with convenience of access. Most often, participants would mention listening to radio news while at work, or overhearing radio news or reading a free paper they picked up while commuting using public transport. In these cases, too, participants often noted that the choice of media was not necessarily to their liking, suggesting that they may have been forced to follow news they did not find particularly trustworthy. This was especially clear in Hungary where several participants expressed consternation at the free, pro-Fidesz partisan paper Local. The following quote from a 59-year-old woman is indicative of this wider pattern:

Oh, I know! It’s terrible … It’s dreadful! I’ve read things in it like Sárközy is definitely homosexual … so it’s terrible. I am ashamed of myself, but I sometimes take it for the sudoku…and it’s great for heating. (Hun-12, female, 59).

In many cases, such instances of news consumption, shaped by contextual factors, arguably constitute another version of accidental news exposure, similar in kind to the more commonly researched accidental exposure on social media. This form of accidental news consumption is likewise shaped by one’s social networks—family members, friends, or co-workers—who may not share one’s ideological or political orientations. The case of readers of the pro-Fidesz paper Local in Hungary, however, reminds us that not all contextual restrictions are accidental, but can rather be intentionally manufactured by illiberal elites who, once in power, manipulate people’s everyday media environment in ways that make the consumption of biased news almost inevitable, facilitating access to sources that are sympathetic to their causes. Whether happening in online or offline environments, such cases of news consumption provide yet another piece of the puzzle that helps explain why people may end up consuming media they do not trust.

The last notable factor influencing the consumption of news participants considered untrustworthy was the desire to get access to diverse views. Tellingly, this factor was evident only in three of the countries—Hungary, Poland, and Serbia—suggesting that the pursuit of diversity may be driven by the more advanced polarization of media landscapes in these three countries, and especially by the disappearance of impartial media capable of covering a diversity of perspectives. This is evident from participants’ comments that demonstrated an awareness of diverse political and ideological views on current affairs in the public domain, while simultaneously recognizing that such diverse views could not be easily found in a single news source, thereby prompting them to consume multiple news sources. In Poland, for instance, several participants mentioned following both the pro-government public broadcaster TVP and the oppositional commercial broadcaster TVN, sometimes alongside other sources, as in the following example:

I look at what they say on TVN and Polsat and on TVP1, but these are three extremely different viewpoints on the same events. I just watch all three just to see how they present these different outlooks. (Pol-08, female, 36)

It is important to note that the desire to obtain access to diverse perspectives was mentioned by participants from a range of political and ideological backgrounds. In Hungary, for instance, diversity was often mentioned by participants sympathetic to the government who felt the need to turn to oppositional media to hear perspectives that were otherwise rarely presented in pro-government outlets. As one pro-government participant explained, he consumes a variety of oppositional media news sources, including both left-wing and extreme right-wing outlets:

There are aspects that I read there so that I have a wider perspective. So, I do read left-wing and extreme right-wing sources sometimes, and I’d like to add that at times I get more precise, detailed news from these sources. (Hun-01, male, 47)

Several anti-government participants would likewise report following sources opposite to their own persuasions, as in the following excerpt from an interview with a participant who identifies herself as left-wing, but regularly reads right-wing news websites, such as Magyar Hang and Heti Válasz (also known as Válasz Online):

I find the right-wing point of view interesting. I really didn’t trust Szabolcs Szerető, I still don’t completely do, but I am interested in … how should I say … The papers I read usually look at things from a left-wing perspective, I need someone who looks at them from a right-wing one. Válasz Online … they are excellent, excellent right-wing journalists. They are very good. Each new article is better than the previous one. (Hun-29, female, 79, rural)

The above quote clearly juxtaposes trust and news consumption, by explaining that the participant does not trust Szabolcs Szerető (a regular contributor to Magyar Hang) but is nonetheless interested in his views to acquaint herself with a different political perspective. This attitude echoes previous research (Fletcher & Park, 2017; Tsfati & Cappella, 2003) that found that some people use specific news sources precisely because they distrust them and want to hear their side of the story regardless. This quote also indicates that following news from ideologically or politically diverse sources is not necessarily linked with a willingness to reconsider one’s own positions. Rather, as some of our participants explained, such news habits were aimed at ‘knowing the enemy’ or ‘knowing the other side’ without questioning one’s own opinions. When asked to explain why he consumed the oppositional news website Index, a Hungarian anti-government participant noted: ‘Because it’s good to check… what the other end, for example, thinks of the same topic, even if I don’t agree with it, just to… see’ (Hun-15, male, 38). Another conservative, pro-Fidesz participant, who likewise consumed oppositional sources, was even more unequivocal in her explanation: ‘Because you have to know what others … what our enemies think [laughs]’ (Hun-14, female, 56). Although we should be wary of drawing conclusions about cross-country differences based on what is a very small sample, it is worth noting that such unequivocal answers that justified exposure to a diversity of views with reference to ‘knowing the enemy’ were particularly common among Hungarian pro-government participants. This pattern is consistent with the survey findings presented in the previous chapter, which showed that in Hungary (and to a somewhat lesser extent in Poland) respondents with open news repertoires—even those who consumed primarily liberal, anti-government sources—were rather illiberal in their views on both cultural and constitutional issues.

In sum, our qualitative findings confirm that trust is an important, but clearly not the only factor informing news consumption choices, and that a fuller understanding of people’s news preferences requires us to pay attention to a range of other factors, including convenience of access, the force of habits, the impact of contextual incentives and restrictions imposed by family, workplace and related environments, as well as the desire to counteract perceived media bias by means of accessing a diverse range news sources. As we have seen through numerous examples, consuming media one does not find trustworthy can cut both ways: it can serve as a basis for establishing a more multifaceted, balanced view on current affairs, or alternatively to reinforce one’s pre-existing opinions. In the following section, we build on these insights by taking a closer look at media trust itself to consider what it might mean to citizens of the four examined countries, and which criteria they might use when seeking to establish which media to trust.

4.3 Finding Trustworthy Information in an Untrustworthy Media Environment: Unpacking the Criteria of Trustworthiness

So far, we have proceeded under the assumption that the meaning of trustworthiness and the criteria used to establish it are self-evident. This is also common in existing research on media trust, which pays little attention to what people mean when saying they ‘trust’ the media. Even though several scales have been developed to measure media trust and related concepts such as media credibility (see Prochazka & Schweiger, 2019), researchers rarely pay attention to how specific media qualities relate to media trust. The handful of studies that do examine these relationships offer mixed results, with some finding positive correlations between trust and quality perceptions, including accuracy, impartiality, fairness, seriousness, tonality and journalists’ expertise, while others did not find any significant correlations (see Fawzi et al., 2021, p. 161). As we show in this section, our conversations with citizens from the four countries, especially those most affected by the rise of the illiberal public sphere, confirmed that the meanings of criteria used to establish media trustworthiness are far from uniform. Indeed, in some cases, the way people judged trustworthiness effectively led them to trust outlets that were untrustworthy.

Unpacking the link between media trust and perceived media independence is particularly revealing in this context. Media independence is central to the World Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking of countries produced by Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF, 2023) that is routinely used as an indicator of the state of media globally. Media independence also features prominently in public debates in the countries we focus on, and recent public opinion surveys conducted in these countries confirm that it is seen as important by most citizens (e.g. Committee for Editorial Independence, 2023). Yet, our analysis suggests that the way citizens understand media independence is not necessarily conducive to finding reliable sources of information.

At first sight, when looking at survey data on citizens’ perceptions of the media in general, the relationship between media use, media trust and perceived independence brings few surprises. In all four countries, both perceived independence and frequency of use are significantly positively associated with trust—in all cases, statistical significance is p < 0.01—meaning that citizens are more likely to use the media they trust, and more likely to trust media if they perceive them as independent. However, once we break these patterns down by individual media brands (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4), the picture becomes more complicated. Although the general pattern still holds for most news brands in all four countries—that is, news brands that are perceived as more independent are more likely to be trusted—there are some clear exceptions. In all four countries, we found at least one prominent news brand that enjoys disproportionately high levels of public trust, despite being perceived as lacking in independence. Such exceptions are particularly pronounced in Serbia, where two major pro-government television channels—the public service channel RTS and the commercial channel Prva—were considered almost as trustworthy as the independent commercial channel N1 (although it is worth highlighting that none of these channels is trusted by most of the population). The presence of these outliers is also reflected in the overall strength of the correlation between perceived independence of individual brands and media trust, which is considerably weaker in Serbia than in the other three countries.

Fig. 4.3

Perceived independence and trust in news media brands (Czech Republic and Hungary)

Fig. 4.4

Perceived independence and trust in news media brands (Poland and Serbia)

There are several possible explanations for these patterns, and specifically for why the correlation between perceived media independence and media trust might be weaker in Serbia. First, the results of recent media monitoring exercises suggest that public service media in Serbia, along with the commercial channel TV Prva, provide considerably more balanced electoral coverage than other commercial pro-government broadcasters, including TV Pink, Happy, and TV B92, and are considerably less likely to adopt a negative tone when reporting on opposition parties (FNF 2022: 12–13). Although such balanced, neutral reporting appears to be limited to the election period only, it may be sufficient to give a boost to public trust despite widely recognized lack of independence. This is particularly likely given the fact that Serbia experienced only very brief periods of liberalization, and that the illiberal public sphere is by now firmly established, meaning that citizens have become accustomed to an environment where media independence is in short supply, and where truly independent outlets are harder to access. In such a context, discriminating between more or less biased media coverage may well be essential to navigating the news environment, leading citizens to trust news sources that are firmly under government control, but have the relative advantage of providing somewhat less biased coverage than more openly partisan outlets. This interpretation is consistent with the findings of a qualitative study of media trust in Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia (Pješivac et al., 2016), which likewise found media distrust most prevalent in Serbia. The authors link this to the country’s specific pattern of political development after the fall of communism that they see as conducive to a generalized distrust of political institutions including the media.

However, while citizens’ adaptation to an illiberal public sphere can help explain the patterns observed in Serbia, understanding the relatively high trust in some of the government-controlled media in Hungary and, especially, Poland where the illiberal public sphere has a relatively shorter history and is less advanced than in Serbia, requires us to consider other possible factors. Particularly revealing in this context is the position of public service media in three of the countries where public service outlets are under government control: Radio-television Serbia (RTS) and Radio Beograd in Serbia, MTV and Kossuth Radio in Hungary, and TVP and Polish Radio in Poland. In all cases, the correlation between perceived independence and trust is not linear, suggesting that there are significant numbers of citizens who continue to trust public service media even though they might acknowledge that they lack independence (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4). This suggests that public service media hold a special status in the trust-independence nexus, and that some citizens continue to trust them even when they undergo governmental capture and are integrated into the illiberal public sphere. Why might that be?

The key to answering this question lies in acknowledging that media independence might not mean the same thing to everyone. To start with, for some participants in Serbia and Hungary—notably those who claimed to trust public service media while recognizing its lack of independence—government influence was simply not considered problematic. On the contrary, it was the very reason that made them see public service media as trustworthy because it meant that they provided access to the ‘official’ perspective and represented the opinions of those in power. Several Hungarian and Serbian participants mentioned trusting public service channels precisely because they are under government control. For instance, participant Hun-30 (male, 38) explained: ‘Well, given that it is government-owned news, if I’d rather hear something official, I will switch to MTV’. In a similar manner, a Serbian participant explained that she continued to trust Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) despite knowing it was biased, because of its association with the power of the state: ‘RTS is state property, which means they are the biggest and strongest, so to say, so I trust what they say’ (Srb-14, female, 42). The emphasis on power—‘the biggest and the strongest’—and the reference to public service media providing ‘official’ views are particularly telling here and indicate that trust is not bestowed on sources that offer an impartial account, but rather on those that have the power to make their account of news look official and consequential. Ultimately, then, what guides these participants’ news consumption choices and media trust for is not the desire to obtain an accurate account of current affairs, but rather the desire to get access to the official, state-endorsed view, whether it corresponds to reality or not.

Arguably, given the nature of the media and political environment in Serbia and Hungary, such an interpretation of trustworthiness can be considered, in a sense, pragmatic (cf. Schwarzenegger, 2020). Given that the government holds considerable power to set the limits of what can be aired in public and to define what counts as ‘official’ truth, government-controlled outlets provide trustworthy sources of official narratives. Even though these narratives themselves are not true, familiarizing oneself with them is important, because it helps one navigate the limits of what is publicly desirable. Such reasoning was occasionally present also among participants who were clearly critical of government-controlled outlets, but nonetheless found it important to follow them. The following quote from an interview with one of our Serbian participants offers a case in point. This participant was clearly annoyed by the pro-government tone of many Serbian outlets, and the primacy given to President Vučić’s view, yet she insisted that she had to keep listening to such coverage ‘to be informed’:

When I see all those other portals, social media and newspapers, I feel like they see me as a… well, not a sheep, but an animal without reason, who is there to blindly follow in their lead. It makes me sick. Even in the 90s, when I was younger, it wasn’t like that. Sometimes, when I listen to what Vučić has to say, I keep swearing all around the house, as if I’m arguing with my TV. But it makes me so mad that I can’t help it. And I still keep listening because I have to be informed, and sometimes I even consider it a pastime. I mean, listening to that man’s comments and his lies… (Srb-19, female, 62)

While instances such as the ones mentioned above—where media were seen as trustworthy because they were under government control—were rather rare, several other participants judged media trustworthiness based on criteria that likewise diverged from established normative and epistemological assumptions associated with trustworthy information sources. Even though participants referred to familiar values—such as independence, impartiality, balance, or objectivity—their interpretation of these terms could vary widely. The different interpretations of independence as a basis of trust provide a particularly telling example. On the one hand, some participants interpreted independence in terms of independence from the state. For instance, some of the liberal, anti-government participants in Hungary explained that they trusted sources such as the news websites Index and 444.hu, or the free-to-air TV channel RTL Klub, or weekly magazines Heti Világgzdság (HVG) and Magyar Narancs because they believed they were independent from the government. Following this reasoning, lack of independence was seen as a reason for distrust. For instance, one of the Serbian participants (Srb-27, female, 60+) explained that she avoids watching pro-government TV channels—including commercial channels Pink, Happy and B92, as well as the public service channel broadcaster—because they are all biased in favour of President Vučić and his allies.

However, for some of the other participants, independence from the government was not sufficient. If a news outlet was privately owned, especially if it had foreign owners, it was considered problematic, too. For instance, as one of the Polish participants explained, both the public broadcaster TVP and the major commercial broadcaster TVN lack in independence, albeit in different ways: ‘TVP operates in accordance with what the government wants, because the government provides the money. TVN is influenced by foreign capital, following the money trail’ (Pol-03, male, 34). As a result, he felt that they were both equally biased and untrustworthy, offering ‘competing realities’, while truth was ‘somewhere in the middle’. Indeed, our interviews and diaries indicate that ‘independence’ was so malleable that it could be applied to far-right outlets associated with extreme political movements and parties. This was the case with one of our Hungarian participants, who thought that the far-right news portal KurucInfo was independent and therefore trustworthy. Although he acknowledged its association with the far-right Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk), he clearly felt that independence from other political parties, as well as from foreign influence, was considerably more important. He claimed: ‘This [KurucInfo] is the one, that … can be called independent … Obviously not of Mi Hazánk but of the rest, it definitely is … It is independent of political parties and foreign influence’ (Hun-15, male, 38).

Finally, a handful of participants interpreted independence as independence from news media and from editorial control. This argument was used to justify trust in information found on social media, which were seen as uniquely suited to enabling unmediated access to reality and, therefore, authentic information on public affairs. For instance, a Czech participant explained that he trusts information found on Facebook accounts of politicians and parties, because this gives him fist-hand access to their tweets and texts, rather than relying on a second-hand account provided by news media: ‘So when I see it directly on their accounts, I have an immediate, first-hand account. I don’t get it from somebody else who could adjust the information in a way’ (Cze-06, male, 19). A Polish participant justified his preference for YouTube as a source of information using a very similar argument:

Yes, because YouTube offers you the most credible information, and it’s not censored in any way unless the content is inappropriate in some way, while a website has an administrator and the information you can find there depends on them. (Pol-16, male, 34)

These perceptions echo existing research on the appeal of social media, which often notes the importance of perceptions of social media as vehicles of unmediated, authentic reality (Heřmanová et al., 2021). Moreover, they align with the findings of existing qualitative research on media trust, which likewise reveal that for a notable minority who perceive social media as trustworthy, this is typically associated either with the assumption that social media offer access to a broad range of sources or views or with their presumed authenticity (Newman & Fletcher, 2017).

The divergent interpretations of media independence evident from our qualitative data puts the quantitative association between media trust and perceived media independence in a different light and suggests that relying on perceived independence as a basis of trust may on occasion lead citizens to untrustworthy sources. This leads to the question of whether other criteria of trustworthiness used by citizens may be equally problematic. Impartiality, often discussed in conjunction with objectivity, was another indicator of trustworthiness frequently mentioned by participants. In most cases, impartiality and objectivity were interpreted in ways consistent with standard understandings of media trustworthiness and associated either with Czech public service media or with some of the commercial, oppositional outlets in the other three countries—that is, sources that are indeed most trustworthy.

However, a small number of Serbian participants, along with one Hungarian participant, associated impartiality and objectivity with news sources that did not deserve to be trusted, namely, state-controlled Russian outlets. Although at least some of the participants acknowledged the pro-Russian slant of such media, they believed that the coverage of domestic politics was considerably more impartial, neutral, or objective than coverage of domestic affairs provided in domestic media. A Serbian participant who found the Russian news website Sputnik trustworthy was not even aware of Russian ownership, and insisted that in contrast to some of domestic media, Sputnik’s reporting is more factual, free from opinion, and allowed him to make up his own mind:

They’re objective. Now, someone might ask if it is even possible to be objective today … Some will say, well, Vučić or Vučić’s brother is the owner, so how can it be objective. But I don’t know who the owner is, I’m reading what they have written. So, there was never a moment where I saw written in some of their political articles: ‘I like this one, vote for him, he is the best for us’. There is nowhere, never a personal conclusion […] In all other media—Blic, Kurir—the journalist is the one who concludes for me whether someone is good or bad. And here [on Sputnik), in general, I hear what is happening today, what kind of events happened, was it some sort of a meeting […] and there is no sign of that, that conclusion, where I am being guided by the journalist, indirectly, to vote or to like somebody. I am told what happened, who, what, why, and goodbye. ‘Now, you think for yourself.’ (Srb-03, male, 46)

Another Serbian participant who found Sputnik particularly trustworthy was aware of its pro-Russian bias, but nonetheless compared it rather favourably to domestic media, arguing that political influence and bias are less obvious:

Of course, they are not objective, they are media and they are paid to do what they do, so they certainly cannot be objective. They follow a carrot on a stick and are told what to write. Of course they do it, but I think it is less visible with them [Sputnik], compared to Informer. (Srb-10, female, 52)

In a similar way, a participant of Russian origins from Hungary claimed that the TV channel Russia 1 was ‘neutral, meaning neither left-wing nor right-wing, and publishing neutral news’ (Hun-02, female, 44).

A common trait shared by all these responses was profound disappointment with mainstream media, which was particularly palpable in Serbia, where most participants found media in general rather untrustworthy and often felt that bias plagued not only pro-government but also oppositional sources. Yet again, we see how a climate of distrust of mainstream media, while encouraging citizens to be critical and look for alternative sources, could ultimately lead them to rely on untrustworthy news outlets.

Finally, although most participants kept referring to familiar criteria of trustworthiness—such as independence, impartiality, and objectivity—some abandoned those criteria altogether and instead explained they trusted specific news sources because they shared their political or ideological views. Such interpretations of trustworthiness were found among participants across the political spectrum, although they were somewhat more common among more illiberal participants. For instance, in Hungary, a right-wing government supporter used similar arguments to explain her preference for the right-wing TV channel Hír TV: ‘Of course they say that Hír TV is biased, it is true that it is a right-wing channel but since I share a similar way of thinking… [laughs] this is what I want to listen to’ (Hun-14, female, 56). In Poland, a participant who voted for the Law and Justice (PiS) party explained her belief in the credibility of the public broadcaster with direct reference to its alignment with her political preferences—‘Because it’s the most credible for me. It’s a broadcaster in the hands of PiS, and I’m a PiS supporter’ (Pol-13, female, 38). However, similar arguments were occasionally found also among more liberal participants. For instance, an anti-government participant from Hungary explained his preference for the TV channel RTL Klub by recalling that, a few years prior, ‘they [had] criticized Orbán government quite heavily’ and as a result, she ‘started to like them more’ (Hun-22, female, 36). A similar argument was used by a Serbian participant who explained that she prefers to follow oppositional media such as the TV channel N1, the daily Danas, or the weekly magazine Vreme, ‘because what they say and show is similar to my own thoughts and opinions; similar to my perception of the world and events’ (Srb-19, female, 62) even though she also acknowledged that they might not be always right.

In cases like these, much as with some of our Serbian and Hungarian participants who trust public service media because they are controlled by the government, the desire to obtain an accurate, impartial account of current affairs is no longer the central driver of trust. Rather, preference is given to those news sources that can be trusted to provide a particular version of truth—either one that is aligned with one’s personal politics and ideological preferences, or one that is consistent with official views. It is telling that such an approach to trustworthiness, in which trust becomes fully detached from the search for truth, was found exclusively in Hungary, Poland and Serbia, and that it was most common in Hungary and Serbia. These were also the only two countries where some participants trusted public service media precisely because they were subjected to government control. Even though we should be mindful of the qualitative nature of the investigation, the fact that these cross-country differences align with different stages of the illiberal public sphere in the four countries suggest that the shifts in the normative and epistemological foundations of media trust outlined above may well be indicative of wider changes in news cultures driven by the rise in illiberalism.

4.4 Conclusions

The findings presented in this chapter help us further develop our arguments about the illiberal public sphere and its impact on news consumption, while also bringing important contributions to wider debates on news consumption and media trust. With regard to the dynamics of the illiberal public sphere, the findings suggest that the different stages of the illiberal public sphere (outlined in Chap. 2) go hand in hand not only with growing polarization of media landscapes, audience attitudes, and news repertoires (as shown in Chap. 3), but also trigger fundamental shifts in media trust. These comprise a decline in levels of generalized media trust, consistent with existing findings on links between media trust and polarization (see Hanitzsch et al., 2018), but also changes in the relationship between media trust and media use, and in the normative and epistemological foundations of criteria people use to evaluate trustworthiness.

More specifically, we showed that in an environment where the illiberal public sphere becomes increasingly dominant, and where the majority of media outlets become objectively untrustworthy, citizens are forced to adopt a pragmatic approach to media trust (Schwarzenegger, 2020; Pasitselska, 2022) and use news sources even though they do not find them entirely credible. This is attributable to a combination of factors, ranging from convenience of access and force of habit, to the desire to gain access to a diversity of views, which motivates some citizens to counteract the one-sided coverage found in mainstream media by consulting multiple, ideologically and political diverse sources. Furthermore, we also showed that, in such an environment, the meanings of criteria used to assess trustworthiness can shift considerably. First, even though they frequently referred to recognizable criteria of trustworthiness (i.e. independence, impartiality, neutrality), several of our participants interpreted these criteria in ways that are inconsistent with existing normative models of democratic citizenship and news consumption and led them to trust sources that were objectively untrustworthy. Second, in some cases, the criteria of trustworthiness themselves shifted entirely, with audiences no longer trusting sources because they were believed to provide a reasonably impartial, truthful account of reality, but rather because they offered access to a particular version of that reality—either one consistent with one’s ideological or political preferences, or one aligned with official views, promoted by those in power.

Beyond implications for our theory of the illiberal public sphere, these findings also contribute to existing work on media use in heavily polarized and illiberal environments and to wider debates on media trust and news consumption. On a methodological level, the research presented in this chapter confirms the benefits of distinguishing between different levels of media trust, including not just generalized media trust, but also trust in individual news brands and different types of media (cf. Strömbäck et al., 2020; Fawzi et al., 2021). Furthermore, our mixed methods approach also demonstrates the advantages of complementing the more commonly used quantitative methods of examining media trust with qualitative methods (cf. Garusi & Splendore, 2023), showing how such methods can help us better understand the interaction between media trust and other factors influencing news consumption, as well as appreciate the multiple and sometimes conflicting meanings attached to media trust by citizens. The latter are particularly important and should lead us to question the comparability of existing quantitative indicators of media trust globally. If it is the case that people can interpret media trust and assess the trustworthiness of the media in divergent ways, then asking survey questions about general levels of media trust is bound to be of limited value, at least when comparing cases where the normative and epistemological underpinnings of media trust are likely to differ.

Empirically, our findings offer further evidence of the disjunction between media trust and news consumption and contribute to existing work that seeks to explain why people occasionally follow media they distrust (Swart & Broersma, 2021; Tsfati & Cappella, 2005), highlighting the importance of convenience, habit, contextual restrictions, and desire for exposure to a diversity of views. Most of these factors are familiar from existing work that challenges the purely instrumental interpretation of news consumption and emphasizes the importance of other personal and social needs, including diversion and entertainment (Blumler, 1979; Katz et al., 1973), the enduring impact of habits and routines (Rubin, 1984), and the impact of everyday life and its associated networks and patterns (Ytre-Arne, 2023). However, our work draws attention to how these factors can combine to contribute to exposure to counter-attitudinal views and media one distrusts. In addition, we also highlight the desire for accessing a diversity of views, which may be of particular importance in more heavily polarized communication environments where the illiberal public sphere is more advanced.

In relation to existing research on news consumption in heavily polarized and illiberal environments, the material presented here offers further evidence of the ‘paradox of (dis)belief’ (Szostek, 2017; Vihalemm & Juzefovičs, 2021; Alyukov, 2023), that is, the tendency of (some) citizens in such environments to distrust and avoid propagandistic outlets while ultimately still believing propagandistic messages. It also further underscores the need to question common assumptions about the beneficial impact of consuming news from a diverse range of sources. Echoing Szostek’s (2017) conclusions emerging from her investigation of the engagement with conflicting narratives of the war among Ukrainian audiences, our evidence suggests that exposure to diversity of views is not necessarily normatively beneficial. Rather, it can potentially lead to the reinforcement of existing views, thereby further deepening polarization.

Finally, our findings have implications for how media trust is theorized and judged from a normative perspective. The existence of divergent normative and epistemological foundations of media trust and criteria of trustworthiness suggests that media trust is not always unambiguously positive, contrary to what much writing in the field assumes. Rather, its normative benefits vary with context. In an environment where the media are relatively independent, professional, and able to provide trustworthy information, high levels of media trust are a welcome sign and an indicator of a well-functioning civic culture and democratic environment. In contrast, where mainstream media are unable to function independently and act largely as amplifiers of official narratives, high levels of media trust may indicate the exact opposite—namely, that the media no longer serve democratic ends, but are rather seen as trustworthy sources of official, government-sanctioned views. As we have shown, this kind of interpretation of media trustworthiness is already present among some of our Serbian and Hungarian participants, suggesting that, in these two countries, some citizens have come to accept that to make informed decisions, they need to prioritize obtaining up-to-date information from official outlets, regardless of whether it corresponds to reality. In their view, this requires trusting mainstream media that are most clearly associated with the government in power, seen as providing the most reliable and up-to-date access to official narratives.