Social Media Help Me Distinguish between Truth and Lies': News Consumption in the Polarised and Low-trust Media Landscape of Greece


Kalogeropoulos, Antonis ORCID: 0000-0002-2096-5382, Rori, Lamprini and Dimitrakopoulou, Dimitra (2021) Social Media Help Me Distinguish between Truth and Lies': News Consumption in the Polarised and Low-trust Media Landscape of Greece. SOUTH EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 26 (1). pp. 109-132.

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Abstract

How do citizens in countries with weak institutions and highly disrupted media landscapes navigate news? We examine a typical South European case, Greece, via cross-national data sets. Combining data from a pool of different surveys, we show that in Greece–unlike the other five countries of the sample–social media are more trusted than news media to help individuals navigate their news environment. A thematic analysis of open-ended survey answers indicates that Greek respondents embrace alternative news sources (social media, digital-born outlets) in record-high numbers because of their distrust of traditional news outlets. Taking into account the historic interplay of media and political institutions, we present Greece as a dystopian case for news organisations and the information environment in countries with weak institutions.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Mass media, new media, social media, news consumption, alternative news sources, political trust, trust in news, polarised pluralist system, media disruption
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 25 May 2022 10:31
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 21:14
DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2021.1980941
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3148234

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