“Seeing but not Believing”: Undergraduate Students’ Media Uses and News Trust

Authors

  • Ana Isabel Melro University of Maia; Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho Portugal
  • Sara Pereira Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho Portugal

Keywords:

young people, media uses, news trust, information, social media

Abstract

Young people often encounter the news on social media while engaging in social and entertainment practices. Despite relying on social media for news, youth see online information with suspicion and as less trustworthy than traditional news media. While many factors contribute to the widespread decline in news trust, the relationship between youth news media uses and their trust in the news remains unclear. This article seeks to understand how Portuguese undergraduate students describe their news trust, and how these perceptions relate to their media uses. We draw on a mixed-methods study using a survey (N = 562) and focus groups (N = 45) with students from diverse disciplines, between 2016 and 2017. The findings reveal a paradoxical relationship between students’ media uses and news trust. Students mistrust online news but stay informed through social media. This is explained by emotional needs as well as perceptions of the news combining optimistic and critical stances. This study suggests further research on what news trust means for young people on social media.

Author Biographies

Ana Isabel Melro, University of Maia; Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho Portugal

Ana Melro is a lecturer in Communications BsC at the University of Maia and a researcher in the Communication and Society Research Centre at the University of Minho, Portugal. She did her PhD at the University of Minho, in partnership with the Autonomous University of Barcelona in which she studied the role of the news in young people’s lives. She was also a postdoctoral research fellow of the Institute of Coding in the Graduate School at Education of the University of Exeter, where she studied the learning of coding by non-Computer Science students, relating her knowledge to her previous background in media and education studies. She is also a member of the Observatory of Media and Information Literacy (MIL Obs) at the University of Minho and an associate editor for the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 

Sara Pereira, Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho Portugal

Sara Pereira is an Associate Professor with Aggregation at the Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Communication Sciences, and researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS) at the University of Minho. In 2004 she got her PhD in Child Studies, specialising in Media Education, at the University of Minho. Her main research areas are children, young people and the media; the rights of expression and participation of children and young people; Media Literacy; and media publics and practices. She has been coordinating several national and European projects and is the author of several publications in these areas. She was director of the Department of Communication Sciences between 2013 and 2019 and director of the Master’s in Communication, Citizenship and Education between 2010 and 2015. She chairs the Media Education Research Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) since July 2019.

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Published

2023-01-26

Issue

Vol. 17 (2023)

Section

Articles

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