Listening to what trust in news means to users: Qualitative evidence from four countries

This report details findings from an inductive, qualitative study of news audiences across four countries, examining varying ways people define the construct of trust in news, how they differentiate between sources, and the role played by digital platforms in how news outlets get evaluated in daily life. Drawing on both focus group discussions and one-on-one in-depth interviews with 132 individuals in Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the report argues that many people focus surprisingly little on the specific journalistic practices employed by news organisations when assessing trustworthiness. Instead, many news consumers fall back on shortcuts involving impressions of brands’ reputations and stylistic differences in the way news gets presented. For those lacking strong trusting relationships to particular news outlets, the experience of navigating information online often reinforced tendencies toward generalised scepticism toward all news—making it that much more challenging for news organizations to build trust with digital audiences.