Populist attitudes and politicians' disinformation accusations

Autor(en)

Jana Laura Egelhofer, Ming Manuel Boyer, Sophie Lecheler, Loes Aaldering

Abstrakt

Populist politicians increasingly accuse opposing media of spreading disinformation or “fake news.” However, empirical research on the effects of these accusations is scarce. This survey experiment (N = 1,330) shows that disinformation accusations reduce audience members’ trust in the accused news outlet and perceived accuracy of the news message, while trust in the accusing politician is largely unaffected. However, only individuals with strong populist attitudes generalize disinformation accusations to the media as an institution and reduce their general media trust. The phrase “fake news” does not amplify any of these effects. These findings suggest that politicians can undermine the credibility of journalism without much repercussion—a mechanism that might also threaten other authoritative information sources in democracies such as scientists and health authorities.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Journal

Journal of Communication

Band

72

Seiten

619–632

Anzahl der Seiten

14

ISSN

0021-9916

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac031

Publikationsdatum

12-2022

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft, 508014 Publizistik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication, Language and Linguistics, Linguistics and Language

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/populist-attitudes-and-politicians-disinformation-accusations(b6c68df8-4598-42f9-bd3b-66e6b811a0cf).html