Communication Science: Interactive Media and Online Communication

News quality from a recipient's perspective

In the light of increasing cost and time pressure in newsrooms the quality of news coverage is threatened by the risk of quality loss. An often mentioned hope that the public would prefer high quality news media and would thus counteract a potential quality loss is based on the assumption that recipients identify such a lack of quality. Therefore the project examines to which extent and under which media conditions recipients can evaluate news quality and which role factors like media competence and education play.

For this purpose the participants of an online panel were presented with several daily updated news reports in several short experiments and they evaluated those reports with regard to several distinct quality dimensions. The reports were manipulated and controlled regarding the factors quality (single manipulation of five dimensions), media image and the possibility of being able to view the report during the evaluation. Additionally recipients’ characteristics and recipients’ media routines were recorded. By this the following research questions can be answered:

How are the relationships of news quality from a normative perspective and from a recipient’s perspective?

Which quality dimensions of news determine their overall evaluation and recipients’ interest to use them?

Which influence does the supplier’s brand image have on the recipients’ assessment of the quality of a report?

What is the influence of recipients’ characteristics like media competence, education, news media usage and political interest on their quality evaluation?

How do situational factors (reception time, visibility of the news during the evaluation) affect the quality assessment of the recipients?

Involved persons

Status

completed