Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This mixed-methods study used Q methodology to uncover two distinct perspectives among U.S. news consumers on their expectations of journalists. One expressed a traditional, neutral view of journalism. The other was more likely to accept journalistic voice and agency. The factors were similar to those uncovered in a previous study of journalists. This study revealed consensus items among news consumers, such as “a journalist’s first obligation is to the truth,” and areas of disagreement. Participants with a more traditional view were more likely to be politically conservative and older. We also found significant differences by trust and journalistic role conception.

Keywords

journalism roles norms news consumers neutrality activism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abdenour

McIntyre

Dahmen

N. S.

(2021). Seeing eye to eye: A comparison of audiences’ and journalists’ perceptions of professional roles and how they relate to trust. Journalism Practice, 15(3), 329–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2020.1716828

Al-Makaty

S. S.

Boyd

D. A.

Van Tubergen

G. N.

(1994). Source credibility during the Gulf war: A Q-study of rural and urban Saudi Arabian citizens. Journalism Quarterly, 71(1), 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769909407100106

American Press Institute. (2018, June 11). How younger and older Americans understand and interact with news. https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/ages-understand-news/

Banasick

(2019). KADE: A desktop application for Q methodology. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(36), 1360. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01360

Brenan

(2021, October 7). Americans trust in media dips to second lowest on record. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx

Brown

S. R.

(1980). Political subjectivity: Applications of Q methodology in political science. Yale University Press. https://qmethod.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/brown-1980-politicalsubjectivity.pdf

Brown

S. R.

(1993). A primer on Q methodology. Operant Subjectivity, 16(3/4), 91–138. https://qmethod.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/brown-1993.pdf

Brown

S. R.

(1996). Q methodology and qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, 6(4), 561–567. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973239600600408

Christians

C. G.

Glasser

McQuail

Nordenstreng

White

R. A.

(2009). Normative theories of the media: Journalism in democratic societies. University of Illinois Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1xcjws

10.

Clark

R. P.

(2021, January 13). Telling it like it is: When writing news requires a distance from neutrality. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2021/telling-it-like-it-is-when-writing-news-requires-distance-from-neutrality/

11.

Cross

R. M.

(2005). Exploring attitudes: The case for Q methodology. Health Education Research, 20(2), 206–213. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyg121

12.

Dan

Ren

(2021). Understanding variations in the framing of people living with HIV: A mixed-methods study of photos in Chinese news. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 98(1), 200–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699020984762

13.

De Lange

F. P.

Heilbron

Kok

. (2018). How do expectations shape perception? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(9), 764–779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.06.002

14.

Douglas

B. D.

Ewell

P. J.

Brauer

(2023). Data quality in online human-subjects research: Comparisons between MTurk, Prolific, CloudResearch, Qualtrics, and SONA. PLOS ONE, 18(3), Article e0279720. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279720

15.

Eddy

(2022, June 15). The changing news habits and attitudes of younger audiences, digital news report. Reuters Institute, University of Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/young-audiences-news-media

16.

Farhi

Ellison

(2020, June 13). Ignited by public protests, American newsrooms are having their own racial reckoning. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/ignited-by-public-protests-american-newsrooms-are-having-their-own-racial-reckoning/2020/06/12/be622bce-a995-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html

17.

Garimella

Smith

Weiss

West

(2021). Political polarization in online news consumption. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 15(1), 152–162. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18049

18.

Geers

(2020). News consumption across media platforms and content. Public Opinion Quarterly, 84, 332–354. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaa010

19.

Gil

Zúñiga

Hinsley

(2013). The press versus the public. Journalism Studies, 14(6), 926–942. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2012.744551

20.

Gravengaard

Rimestad

(2014). Socializing journalist trainees in the newsroom: On how to capture the intangible parts of the process. Nordicom Review, 35, 81–95. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0105

21.

Hallin

D. C.

Mancini

(2004). Comparing media systems: Three models of media and politics. Cambridge University Press.

22.

Hanitzsch

Vos

T. P.

(2017). Journalistic roles and the struggle over institutional identity: The discursive constitution of journalism. Communication Theory, 27(2), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/comt.12112

23.

Hanitzsch

Vos

T. P.

(2018). Journalism beyond democracy: A new look into journalistic roles in political and everyday life. Journalism, 19(2), 146–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849166733

24.

Heider

McCombs

Poindexter

P. M.

(2005). What the public expects of local news: Views on public and traditional journalism. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 82(4), 952–967. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900508200412

25.

Janowitz

(1975). Professional models in journalism: The gatekeeper and the advocate. Journalism Quarterly, 52(4), 618–626. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769907505200402

26.

Kovach

Rosenstiel

(2014). The elements of journalism: What newspeople should know and the public should expect (3rd ed.). Three Rivers Press.

27.

Lapinski

M. K.

Rimal

R. N.

(2005). An explication of social norms. Communication Theory, 15(2), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2005.tb00329.x

28.

Loosen

Reimer

Hölig

(2020). What journalists want and what they ought to do (in)congruences between journalists’ role conceptions and audiences’ expectations. Journalism Studies, 21(12), 1744–1774. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1790026

29.

McIntyre

Dahmen

N. S.

Abdenour

(2018). The contextualist function: US newspaper journalists value social responsibility. Journalism, 19(12), 1657–1675. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488491668

30.

Meijer

I. C.

(2013). Valuable journalism: A search for quality from the vantage point of the user. Journalism, 14(6), 754–770. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884912455899

31.

Mellado

(2015). Professional roles in news content: Six dimensions of journalistic role performance. Journalism Studies, 16(4), 596–614. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.922276

32.

Mitchell

(2016). Younger adults more likely than their elders to prefer reading news. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/06/younger-adults-more-likely-than-their-elders-to-prefer-reading-news/

33.

Mitchell

Blazina

Kiley

Matsa

K. E.

(2014, October 21). Political polarization & media habits. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/

34.

Mitchell

Jurkowitz

Oliphant

J. B.

Shearer

(2021, February 22). About a quarter of republicans, democrats consistently turned only to news outlets whose audiences aligned with them politically in 2020. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/02/22/about-a-quarter-of-republicans-democrats-consistently-turned-only-to-news-outlets-whose-audiences-aligned-with-them-politically-in-2020/

35.

Mothes

(2017). Biased objectivity: An experiment on information preferences of journalists and citizens. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 94(4), 1073–1095. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699016669106

36.

Munno

Craig

Farrish

Richards

(2022). Two mindsets among U.S. journalists: Neutral & activist. Journalism Studies, 23(14), 1779–1801. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2022.2112906

37.

Newman

(2022, June 15). Digital news report. Reuters Institute, University of Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/dnr-executive-summary

38.

Prolific. (2022). https://www.prolific.com

39.

Rhoads

J. C.

Brown

S. R.

(2002). “Sex, lies, and videotape”: Attitudes toward the Clinton impeachment. Operant Subjectivity, 25(2), 99–116. https://ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/index.php/osub/article/view/8915

40.

Riedl

Eberl

J.-M.

(2022). Audience expectations of journalism: What’s politics got to do with it? Journalism, 23(8), 1682–1699. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920976422

41.

Rindskopf

Rose

(1988). Some theory and applications of confirmatory second-order factor analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 23(1), 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327906mbr2301_3

42.

Salmon

(2021, January 21). Media trust hits new low. Axios. https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html

43.

Schudson

(2019, March 6). The fall, rise, and fall of media trust. Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/the-fall-rise-and-fall-of-media-trust.php

44.

Schwaiger

Vogler

Eisenegger

(2022). Change in news access, change in expectations? How young social media users in Switzerland evaluate the functions and quality of news. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27, 609–628. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211072787

45.

Singer

, (2015). Out of bounds: Professional norms as boundary markers. In Carlson

Lewis

S. C.

(Eds.), Boundaries of journalism: Professionalism, practices and participation (pp. 21–36). Routledge. https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/6753/

46.

Skovsgaard

Heiselberg

Andersen

(2024). The context-dependent demand for watchdog journalism: Dynamics in audience expectations for journalists’ role performance. Journalism Practice, 18(9), 2454–2475. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2024.2347340

47.

Steppat

Castro

Esser

(2021). What news users perceive as ‘alternative media’ varies between countries: How media fragmentation and polarization matter. Digital Journalism, 11(5), 741–761. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.1939747

48.

Törnberg

(2022, October 18). How digital media drive affective polarization through partisan sorting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(42), e2207159119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207159119

49.

Tsfati

Meyers

Peri

(2006). What is good journalism? Comparing Israeli public and journalists’ perspectives. Journalism, 7(2), 152–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884906062603

50.

van der Wurff

Schoenbach

. (2014). Civic and citizen demands of news media and journalists: What does the audience expect from good journalism? Journalism & Mass Communications Quarterly, 91(3), 433–451. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699014538974

51.

Vos

T. P.

Eichholz

Karaliova

(2019). Audiences and journalistic capital. Journalism Studies, 20(07), 1009–1027. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1477551

52.

Wilhelm

Detel

(2024). Great expectations? A taxonomy for expectancy research in journalism studies. Journalism, 25(10), 2171–2190. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849231204150

53.

Willnat

Weaver

D. H.

Wilhoit

G. C.

(2019). The American journalist in the digital age: How journalists and the public think about journalism in the United States. Journalism Studies, 20(3), 423–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1387071

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.13 MB

News Consumers’ Expectations of Journalists Vary by Differences in Journalistic Role Preference

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material