“Newstrusting” or “newsbusting?” heuristic and systematic information processing and trust in media

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ There is much debate about whether cable television news, particularly Fox and MSNBC, should be categorized as mainstream media organizations (Daniller, Allen, Tallevi, & Mutz, 2017; Kenix, 2011; Ladd, 2012; Weeks, Ksiazek, & Holbert, 2016). For this study, newspapers and television broadcast news are considered mainstream media as per Daniller et al. (2017) and Ladd (2012). These scholars contend newspapers and television broadcast news are widely considered by the public to be “mainstream”, and most news consumers are able to assess if newspapers and television broadcast news are trustworthy sources even if they are not regular consumers, which cannot always be said about cable news channels.

² While research shows that fake news helped shape the contours of the race by driving up Clinton’s negative ratings, some researchers have pushed back against the claim that fake news on social media played an important role in influencing the election results (Guess, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2020; McCombie, Uhlmann, & Morrison, 2020).