In the brand we trust? The moderating role of journalistic values and news topics in the relation between news source and trust in news

Abstract

This paper examines the relation between news source and trust, while considering the moderating role of journalistic values and type of issue the news deals with (politicized/ not politicized). We conducted a survey experiment in the Netherlands and Sweden. Results suggest that source type indeed matters for trust in news, and that information stemming from traditional sources is much more trusted than identical information coming from alternative websites or social media. The impact of source cue is partly explained by the weight people attach to journalistic values. This effect holds regardless of the issue the news deals with.

Keywords

Journalistic values news trust news media survey political communication

Introduction

With the digitalization of the media environment, the total supply of mediated information has virtually exploded (Strömbäck et al., 2022; Van Aelst et al., 2017). What is more, the sources that produce this endless stream of information have never been more diversified. In contemporary media environments, people can get their news whenever from wherever they like. Importantly, increasing media supply means that people must become more selective when deciding what media to expose themselves and pay attention to (Prior, 2007; Van Aelst et al., 2017). This, in turn, means that people’s preferences have become more important for explaining how much and what media and other information sources they use (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2014; Prior, 2007).

Another important change is that search engines and social media platforms increasingly control the distribution of information, and that people more often encounter individual news items through these ‘side door sources’ (Newman et al., 2022; Park and Lee, 2023) instead of visiting original news sources (Nielsen and Ganter, 2022). These shifting patterns of media use have made curation of information flows much more important (Strömbäck et al., 2024; Thorson and Wells, 2016), while also putting the original sources of news in a more remote position as people select individual news items instead of a news brand (Nielsen and Ganter, 2022).

If these challenges were not enough, traditional news media also face an increasingly hostile environment, where both leading politicians and alternative (or partisan) media repeatedly attack traditional news media for being corrupt and biased (Egelhofer et al., 2021; Meeks, 2020; Ross and Rivers, 2018). Such attacks have become more prevalent as the political debate increasingly focuses on defining reality than on policies, leading to intractable policy controversies despite scientific consensus (Rekker, 2021; Strömbäck et al., 2022). Also, alternative information about such politicized topics is abundantly available, often stemming from alternative sources (Damstra et al., 2021; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020). This means that news covering such issues runs the risk of being drawn into the factual controversies (Flynn et al., 2017).

Against this background, it has become increasingly important for traditional news media to present themselves as trustworthy sources of information and differentiate themselves from other types of media and information sources (Tambun, 2023). A key strategy in that context is referring to their production processes and routines, which are guided by professional journalistic codes of conduct, values and practices aimed to ensure high quality and truthful news (Craft, 2017; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021).

A key research problem is however that it largely remains unknown to what extent such strategies work in contemporary media systems. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have looked at the interplay between news sources and appreciation of journalistic values in terms of building trust in news – and whether this interplay differs once the news deals with highly politicized topics. To remedy this, the purpose of this study is to examine whether (a) information stemming from traditional news brands is considered more trustworthy than information stemming from other types of sources, (b) whether the relation between traditional source cue and trust in news is moderated by the weight that people assign to journalistic values, and (c) whether the degree to which an issue is politicized matters. Toward this end, we conducted a survey experiment in two western European democracies: the Netherlands and Sweden. In short, our results suggest that source type does matter for trust in the news, and that information stemming from traditional sources is more trusted than identical information coming from an alternative website or a social media platform. This effect holds regardless of the issue the news item deals with. Furthermore, we find that, in the Netherlands, the impact of source cue is partly explained by the weight people attach to journalistic values. For Sweden, no such effect is found.

Trust in news

News media play an indispensable role in democratic society. Their primary purpose is to inform the public by reporting relevant facts about political affairs or societal developments and thereby enable citizens to make informed decisions about politics and policy (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021). While no gold standard exists, the quality of the news is often judged by the extent to which the content is fair, balanced, and true. These journalistic norms serve as benchmarks for the process of news making and lead, ideally, to an information environment in which citizens can be free and self-governing (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021). However, for these democratic processes to work, the news media need to live up to these norms, and citizens should use the news media and overall trust the information they obtain from them.

Over the last years, news media trust has become a focus of academic research and societal debate. The emergence of a high choice media environment has meant the rise of numerous new, digital sources creating an endless supply of information (Strömbäck et al., 2022; Van Aelst et al., 2017; Webster, 2014). News also is available in abundance, as access is no longer restricted by factors related to time and place. In this context of overload, user attention has become a scarce commodity for which media must compete. Not only do they face competition from each other, but also from all sorts of other sources offering newsy or entertaining content. As people’s personal preferences are more important than ever in the creation of individual news diets (Prior, 2007; Strömbäck et al., 2022), the news media must find ways to remain distinctive and relevant in the eyes of the public (Pickard, 2006). Building and preserving a reputation of trust is one central element in their strategy to survive in current high choice media environments.

But fierce competition for user attention is not the only factor adding to the importance of trust to traditional news media. There is an increasing prevalence of online alternative media that produce content with a clear partisan signature (Benkler et al., 2018; Ladd, 2011). A recurring feature of these alternative news providers is a distrust of the traditional news media that are referred to as ‘lamestream’ and depicted as untrustworthy (Holt et al., 2019; Marwick and Lewis, 2017; Nygaard, 2019). Among other things, this distrust is expressed by accusing the traditional news media of a left-wing bias, lying or withholding truth, and by questioning their journalistic authority (Egelhofer et al., 2021; Figenschou and Ihlebæk, 2019; Haller and Holt, 2019). In addition, the digital media environment enhances the rapid production and dissemination of misleading or harmful content. Recent years have seen numerous examples of fake news stories that reached a huge audience; information that was not to be trusted – but that was nevertheless consumed by millions of people (e.g., Benkler et al., 2018; Guess and Lyons, 2020).

These developments have led to renewed academic interest in the concept of trust in the news (Fawzi et al., 2021; Strömbäck et al., 2020). Media trust is a multi-faceted concept that may refer to related but different aspects (e.g., Daniller et al., 2017; Hanitzsch et al., 2018; Strömbäck et al., 2020; Tsfati et al., 2022), such as trust in news, trust in journalists, or trust in news in digital or social media (Newman et al., 2019). In this study we focus specifically on the degree to which people trust the information that is presented to them. Trust has been defined as the willingness of a trustor to be vulnerable to the trustee in a context of uncertainty with limited abilities to monitor or control the trustee (Kohring, 2019; Mayer et al., 1995). Applied to a mediated information environment, users are vulnerable in the sense that they form attitudes or take actions based on the information they encounter. They do not have the capabilities or resources to thoroughly assess the reliability of news themselves, and to reduce uncertainty and legitimate trust, they must rely on credibility heuristics. Credibility of information is often conceptualized as judgments of cues that are used heuristically when evaluating message veracity (e.g., Van Der Heide and Lin, 2016).¹ Such judgments can be related to a news outlet or specific content, covering the degree to which these are perceived as fair or unbiased. Notwithstanding the multi-faceted nature of news media trust, research indicates that, overall, the traditional news media remain a highly trusted source in most western democracies (Hanitzsch et al., 2018). For example, data from the Digital News Report indicate that traditional news media are the most trusted sources in most European countries, including the Netherlands and Sweden (Newman et al., 2023).

Thus, our first hypothesis suggests that identifying traditional news media as the source of a message increases trust in the message. This follows from the classic Hovland credibility studies (Hovland and Weiss, 1951). The theoretical mechanism underlying this effect is that source cues reduce the uncertainty embedded in the trust situation. Since most news relates to the non-immediate world it is mostly impossibly for people to validate the veracity of news reports (Strömbäck et al., 2020: 145). This creates uncertainty, but when a news report comes from a traditional news media source, the trustor can assume that journalistic professionalism would not allow publication of the story without verification. When audiences trust the news media, this means that they can expect the media to live by the standards of their profession, which include verification (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021; Liebes, 2000). Given the overall high levels of media trust in the Netherlands and Sweden, it follows that a larger share of participants should assume the veracity of a news report when reported by a traditional media source, compared to information presented by no particular source. In contrast, research suggests that people tend to trust information i.e. distributed via a social media platform less than when information comes from traditional news media (e.g., Karlsen and Aalberg, 2023; Newman et al., 2023). This implies that information from non-traditional sources should be less trusted than information with no designated source. Based on this, our first hypotheses are:

Hypothesis 1

Information from public broadcast services (1a) and established newspapers (1b) is more trusted than information with no designated source

Hypothesis 2

Information from partisan websites (2a) and social media (2b) is less trusted than information with no designated source

The role of journalistic values

Above, we reasoned that trust in traditional news brands is closely related to the journalistic values with which people associate these brands. Journalistic values refer to the normative standards that journalists ideally keep in mind when producing the information that we call news (Choi et al., 2021; Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2021). When these standards are met, the content can be considered to be of high quality. Of course, such normative standards are not set in stone and may change over time. Views may also differ across groups of people, for example when comparing the conceptions of journalists and the wider public (Gil De Zuniga and Hinsley, 2013). However, going over the rich body of research that has been conducted in this field, there is a set of journalistic values that are broadly considered to be indicative of high-quality news content.

The first journalistic norm is factuality or accuracy (e.g., Van der Wurff and Schönbach, 2011). In essence this means that the information presented in the news should be correct and based on facts. Also, the information should be presented in a transparent way; persons and institutions should be easily identifiable, the circumstances under which they have made statements should be clear, and the news item should contain sufficiently precise amounts, dates, and numbers (Urban and Schweiger, 2014). In addition, journalists need to work independently from powerful actors such as governments and corporations. Their position and work must be impartial, enabling the production of content that is unbiased and that may serve to hold those in power accountable. This implies that no structural constraints should be imposed on the selection of topics or the type of coverage. Finally, in a climate of high social fragmentation and political polarization, diversity (or pluralism) is an important journalistic value too (Sambrook, 2012). Diversity implies that in the news, many opinions and actors should be considered and covered in equal depth, and that journalists refrain from picking sides (Tsfati et al., 2006; Urban and Schweiger, 2014), with the caveat that the news still must be truthful and avoid “false balance” (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2004). News articles that address diverse stakeholders’ opinions may help the audience to better understand the views of those with whom they tend to disagree (Choi et al., 2021: 88).

Established news brands are traditionally associated with journalistic values (Siegert, 2015). Hence trust is likely to be driven by the importance that people attach to normative journalistic values. When people belief these values are important, they may hold high expectations of journalistic news media and rely strongly on cues that signal traditional journalistic practices. More specifically, when people assign great importance to journalistic norms like factuality and independence, stemming from an objective-neutral role perception of the media (Tsfati et al., 2006), they are more likely to trust information from traditional news media. On the contrary, the content of alternative, partisan media is usually not the result of journalistic processes guided by traditional normative criteria (Benkler et al., 2018; Strömbäck et al., 2022). In fact, part of their appeal lies in the content being partisan, biased, and provocative (Damstra et al., 2021). The role of journalistic values on social media platforms is more complicated, as these platforms do not produce content themselves. They give room to all sorts of content and journalistic curation is replaced by processes of strategic, personal, social and algorithmic curation (Thorson and Wells, 2016). Therefore, we expect that people who assign great value to journalistic values might trust information less when presented as a result of non-journalistic curation flows. Formalized into our third hypothesis, we expect:

Hypothesis 3

The positive effect of traditional source cue versus non-traditional and no source cue is stronger among people who assign great importance to traditional journalistic values.

Contingency on politicized issues

The relation between source cue and news trust might also depend on the specific issue the news deals with (Tsfati et al., 2022). More specifically, levels of politicization and public controversy might affect the role that type of source plays. Four developments are especially relevant in this regard. First, in many countries, several issue domains have become increasingly politicized. A key example is immigration. Anti-immigrant parties have gained considerable ground across Europe and have fueled public debates with their anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy proposals (Mudde, 2013). This has led to more polarized political landscapes. A second and related development is that facts related to politicized issue domains have become subject of political controversy, even when this information is based on compelling and widely accessible empirical evidence (Flynn et al., 2017). The coverage of these issues by traditional news media has become a focal point of partisan attacks by political actors and alternative media (Holt and Haller, 2017; Ihlebæk and Nygaard, 2021; Nygaard, 2019). Third, intentionally deceptive content often covers issues that mirror the agenda of the conservative and far-right community, such as crime and immigration (Pierri et al., 2020; Zimmermann and Kohring, 2020). Fourth, research demonstrates that audience trust in news coverage of politicized topics is generally lower, in particular for those with high levels of political interest (Tsfati et al., 2022: 9). One explanation is that this segment of the audience is more likely to receive and internalize the vocal attacks on mainstream news coverage of politicized topics.

Thus, when a news item deals with a highly politicized issue, people may be more motivated to assess the trustworthiness of the source than when it deals with a less politicized issue. Politicization increases uncertainty, given controversies about the basic facts that typify politicized issues (Flynn et al., 2017; Glüer and Wikforss, 2022). Under such conditions, source cues may reduce uncertainty, especially when people’s expectations of news media are aligned with the journalistic model of the media. We thus expect that the positive impact of traditional source cue on trust – moderated by journalistic values – is stronger once the news deals with a politicized issue. The same holds for the hypothesized negative impact of non-traditional source cue on trust, which is expected to be stronger when (a) people find journalistic values important and (b) the news deals with a politicized issue. We therefore hypothesize:

Hypothesis 4

The moderation effect hypothesized in H3 is stronger when the information deals with a highly politicized issue.

Cross-country variation: The case of The Netherlands and Sweden

To assess the statistical robustness of our results, we will investigate our hypotheses by means of survey experiments in two European democracies: the Netherlands and Sweden. These countries are comparable with respect to key contextual factors: the media system, media consumption habits, and levels of media trust. Both countries are classified as democratic corporatist media systems (Hallin and Mancini, 2004), and both are considered ‘high-trusting’ societies where traditional media, including their online forms, still hold a strong position. The countries are furthermore similar in terms of news use among their populations. In both the Netherlands and Sweden, online sources from traditional news media are most often used, and both countries have public broadcasters that maintain a relatively strong position. For example, data from the Digital News Report indicate that Dutch public broadcaster NOS Nieuws and its Swedish counterpart SVT News is used by more than half of the population at least once a week (Newman et al., 2023). Of all social media platforms, Facebook is the most popular route to news. In the Netherlands, more than half of the population uses Facebook (60%) and 27% uses the platform for news. Similarly, 68% of the Swedes are on Facebook, and 24% uses the platform for news (Newman et al., 2023). Also, levels of trust in the news are comparable. In the Netherlands, trust in the news has slightly increased from 51% in 2015 to 57% in 2023. The public broadcaster NOS is the most trusted brand, followed by commercial broadcaster RTL Nieuws and regional and local newspapers. In Sweden, the general trend is similar with trust in news having increased from 40% in 2016 to 50% in 2023. Three out of four Swedes trust the public broadcaster SVT, and there is relatively high trust in local newspapers (Newman et al., 2023). Of course, these general figures do preclude the many smaller cross-country differences. Yet, we assess that the similarities in terms of media system, news habits, and levels of media trust allow for a good test of statistical robustness of the findings. Thus, we do not hypothesize any differences across countries, but ask instead:

RQ1: How do results differ across countries?

Given the comparable media contexts, we expect to find similar results in both countries. If this is the case, we can be more confident in concluding that our findings are “true” and statistically robust. We can then also assume that these findings would hold in other countries with similar media system characteristics, such as Germany and the other Scandinavian countries. If, however, the results differ between Sweden and the Netherlands, future studies will be needed to determine whether other contextual factors — such as party system differences or media criticism visibility – may account for these discrepancies. In that case, our findings could serve as a foundation for developing additional or alternative hypotheses about such contextual factors.

Method and design

We tested the hypothesized relationships through a survey experiment that was fielded in the Netherlands from March 9^th to March 20^th , 2023, and in Sweden from April 3^rd to April 25^th, 2023. In the Netherlands, the experiment was administered by I&O Research, an ISO-certified research company in Amsterdam that often collaborates with the University of Amsterdam. I&O Research invited 3900 members of its panel, pre-stratified on gender, age, region of residence, and level of educational attainment. Out of these, 2041 participated in the study (participation rate of 52.3%). In Sweden, the survey was conducted by the Laboratory of Opinion Research (LORE) at the University of Gothenburg. LORE invited 2800 members, of which 1633 answered more than 80% of the applicable questions, leading to a participation rate of 58% (Martinsson et al., 2023). The Swedish National Ethics Review Board approved the study in February 2023 (Approval ID: 2022-06850-01) and a pre-analysis plan was registered before the data were inspected by any of the researchers.² The survey experiment had a 2 x 5 design with one within-subjects factor (issue) with two levels (politicized vs not politicized) and one between-subjects factor (source) with five levels (public broadcaster, quality newspaper, alternative website, social medium platform, no source).

Treatments

To measure the impact of source cue, we manipulated the lay-out of 10 news articles on two different issues: macro-economic developments (GDP) and the relation between immigration and crime. The first is considered a non-politicized issue, while the latter is considered a politicized one. Both in the Netherlands and Sweden, crime and immigration are considered important national problems (mentioned by 21% and 41% of the population respectively in the Eurobarometer 98, conducted in 2023) (European Union, 2023). The economic situation is considered less of an issue (8 and 14% respectively). The articles were based on the latest figures from national research institutes. For the Netherlands this is Statistics Netherlands (CBS), while for Sweden we relied on economic data from Statistics Sweden (SCB) and crime figures from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ). While the articles were written by us, the information presented was factually correct. The economic news articles described a slightly decreasing trend in national GDP rates, whereas the crime and immigration articles described how citizens with an immigrant background are more often suspected of criminal offences than those without such a background – a difference that is reduced when demographic and socio-economic factors are considered. Importantly, the articles were short (just below 100 words) and reported about these figures in a detached manner.

In the first condition, the articles were presented in the lay-out (including logo) of the national public broadcaster (NOS for the Netherlands, SVT Nyheter for Sweden). In the second condition, participants read the article with lay-out and logo of a well-known national newspaper (NRC Handelsblad, Svenska Dagbladet). In the third condition, the article was presented with layout and logo of a well-known alternative website (The Post Online, Samhällsnytt), and in the fourth condition, the article seemed to come from Facebook. Participants in the control group read the news article without any source cue. The stimuli can be found in the Appendix.

Measures

Our dependent variable is trust in news. Building on Strömbäck et al. (2020), it is assessed by the question “To what extent do you trust the information presented in this news article?” The response scale ranges from 1 = do not trust at all to 7 = trust completely. Appreciation of journalistic values is assessed by a set of questions asking respondents to rate the importance of four professional journalistic norms. The wording of the question is “How important should each of the following be for journalists, when they cover the news?”. The items ask about “verifying the facts”, “not publishing rumors”, “always staying neutral”, and “covering both sides” (based on Tsfati et al., 2006).³ Participants respond on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = not important at all to 7 = very important. As we expect the appreciation of journalistic norms to be highly interrelated, the items are combined into a scale with modest reliability with an α of 0.77 for the Dutch data and an α of 0.53 for the Swedish data, leading us to interpret the results with caution (M = 5.94, SD = 0.84 for Netherlands, M = 6.32, SD = 0.72 for Sweden).⁴ We control for general media trust (“To what extent do you trust information stemming from the news media in the Netherlands/Sweden?” on a seven point scale, M = 4.69, SD = 1.27 for the Netherlands, M = 4.77, SD = 1.22 for Sweden), age (M = 51.35, SD = 17.11 for the Netherlands, M = 54.12, SD = 16.14 for Sweden), level of educational attainment (M = 4.78, SD = 1.52 for the Netherlands based on a seven-point scale, M = 5.90, SD = 1.99 for Sweden based on a nine-point scale), and gender (52.7% females in the Netherlands, 48.9% females in Sweden). Additionally, we have run models including a variable that captures the use of the sources to which participants are exposed in their daily life. For traditional and alternative media, we asked for each medium how often the respondent used it in the past week (0-6 scale, where 0 stands for never and 6 for several times per day). For Facebook we asked the same question particularly for the use of news and discussion. For the no source condition, the score was always 0. We anticipated that higher use yields higher trust (see Tsfati et al., 2025) and that indeed turned out to be the case for both countries in the main effects. As other results did not change fundamentally and the variable conceptually partly overlaps with the no source condition, we did not include these measures in further analyses.

The influence of source cue on trust, and the moderating impact of journalistic values and issue, is examined by estimating ordinary least squares regression models. The source cues are included as dummy variables, while the control condition (no source cue) serves as the benchmark.

Randomization checks

The various conditions do not differ on our control variables age (F(9) = 1.01, p = .43 for the Netherlands, F(9) = 0.45 , p = .91 for Sweden), gender (χ² (9) = 7.50, p = .59; for the Netherlands, χ² (9) = 9.34, p = .39 for Sweden) and education (F(9) = 0.53, p = .86 for the Netherlands, F(9) = 1.06, p = .39 for Sweden), and also not on news use (F(9) = 0.54, p = .85 for the Netherlands, F(9) = 1.01, p = .43 for Sweden).

Results

Turning to the results, Table 1 presents an overview of all experimental conditions, together with the number of participants and descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) of our dependent variable. For the Netherlands, the results from a post-Anova Tukey multiple comparisons of means show that differences in trust are significant between the public broadcaster (NOS) and the alternative right-wing website (The Post Online) and Facebook. The same holds for the differences between the quality newspaper (NRC) and the alternative website and Facebook. Finally, respondents in the control group (not exposed to any source cue) had more trust in the information than the ones reading from Facebook, and less trust than respondents who were exposed to the article from a traditional quality outlet (public broadcaster or newspaper). These differences are significant and in line with our expectations. Similarly, in Sweden the differences are significant between the traditional news sources (SVT and SvD) on the one hand and the non-traditional sources (Samhällsnytt and Facebook) on the other. Also, respondents not exposed to any source cue report significantly more trust than the ones exposed to non-traditional source cue and less trust than those who read the article from public broadcaster SVT Nyheter. These results are also in line with hypothesis 1 and 2. For both countries there is no significant difference in level of trust between the groups that were exposed to a news article about macroeconomic developments (The Netherlands: M = 4.62, SD = 0.05; Sweden: M = 4.77, SD = 0.05) and the ones who read an article about crime and immigration (The Netherlands: M = 4.59, SD = 0.05, t = - 0.50, p = .62; Sweden: M = 4.76, SD = 0.06, t = 0.15, p = .88).

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics in level of trust in news.

Data from The Netherlands (N = 2104)
Condition	Source	Issue	Trust in news (M, SD)
1 (n = 234)	Public broadcaster (NOS)	Economy	4.88 (1.43)
2 (n = 239)	Public broadcaster (NOS)	Crime & immigration	4.96 (1.35)
3 (n = 226)	Quality newspaper (NRC)	Economy	4.90 (1.41)
4 (n = 215)	Quality newspaper (NRC)	Crime & immigration	4.85 (1.42)
5 (n = 206)	Partisan website (TPO)	Economy	4.43 (1.43)
6 (n = 213)	Partisan website (TPO)	Crime & immigration	4.31 (1.48)
7 (n = 180)	Social medium (Facebook)	Economy	4.09 (1.52)
8 (n = 187)	Social medium (Facebook)	Crime & immigration	4.13 (1.59)
9 (n = 192)	-	Economy	4.70 (1.42)
10 (n = 212)	-	Crime & immigration	4.59 (1.49)
Data from Sweden ( N = 1674)
1 (n = 183)	Public broadcaster (SVT)	Economy	5.33 (1.35)
2 (n = 200)	Public broadcaster (SVT)	Crime & immigration	5.35 (1.36)
3 (n = 161)	Quality newspaper (SvD)	Economy	5.25 (1.36)
4 (n = 170)	Quality newspaper (SvD)	Crime & immigration	5.19 (1.43)
5 (n = 172)	Partisan website (Samhällsnytt)	Economy	4.27 (1.52)
6 (n = 194)	Partisan website (Samhällsnytt)	Crime & immigration	4.00 (1.74)
7 (n = 145)	Social medium (Facebook)	Economy	3.90 (1.68)
8 (n = 151)	Social medium (Facebook)	Crime & immigration	4.19 (1.62)
9 (n = 156)	-	Economy	4.97 (1.42)
10 (n = 142)	-	Crime & immigration	5.04 (1.35)

For a more stringent test of Hypothesis 1 and 2, we rely on multivariate regression analyses. Table 2 shows the impact of each source cue on trust in the news compared to the control group that read the same information with no designated source cue. In both countries, the results show that references to traditional news brands – public broadcaster and quality newspaper – have a positive impact on trust, thus confirming hypothesis 1a and 1b. In contrast, a reference to Facebook leads to lower levels of trust, in line with hypothesis 2b. In the Swedish case, the information is also less trusted when it seems to come from a partisan website, although this does not hold in the Netherlands. This provides partial support for hypothesis 2a.

Table 2.

Predicting trust in news per source cue.

	The Netherlands		Sweden
Variable	b	Beta	b	Beta
Constant	1.24 (0.25)***		3.72 (0.39)***
Source1- public broadcast	0.32 (0.08)***	0.09	0.34 (0.11)**	0.09
Source2 - quality newspaper	0.33 (0.08)***	0.09	0.23 (0.12)*	0.06
Source3 - partisan website	−0.06 (0.08)	−0.02	−0.76 (0.11)***	−0.20
Source4 - facebook	−0.37 (0.09)***	−0.10	−0.91 (0.12)***	−0.22
General media trust	0.62 (0.02)***	0.53	0.32 (0.03)***	0.25
Journalistic values (JV)	0.05 (0.03)†	0.03	−0.03 (0.05)	−0.01
Age	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.02	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.04
Education	0.07 (0.02)***	0.07	0.03 (0.02)†	0.04
Sex (female)	−0.13 (0.05)*	−0.04	−0.19 (0.07)**	−0.06
R squared	0.35		0.19
N	2104		1635
AIC	3196		3560

Note. Values are unstandardized coefficients and standard errors.

^†p < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed test).

Table 3 explores the moderating role of journalistic values and type of issue, the upper part presents the analyses based on Dutch data and the lower part shows the results for Sweden. Model 1 examines the main effects of our variables of interest. Not surprisingly, we observe a positive effect of traditional source cue (compared to non-traditional and no source cues) on trust in the news. Appreciation of journalistic values and a politicized news topic do however not have an impact on trust, although the positive coefficient of journalistic values is at the brink of conventional significance in the Netherlands. Model 2 examines whether the positive impact of traditional source cue is moderated by appreciation of journalistic values. In the Netherlands, we find that this is indeed the case. The more weight people assign to journalistic values, the stronger the positive impact of traditional source cue. In Sweden, we do not find such an effect, as there is no significant interaction between traditional source cue and journalistic values.⁵ When running the models with the single items for journalistic values, we see for the Netherlands that the positive interaction effect holds across the board, but is particularly strong for factuality (B = 0.29, p < .001 for the interaction terms). For Sweden, we find no significant interaction between traditional source cue and any of the journalistic values. Therefore, we can only partly accept Hypothesis 3. Finally, Model 3 adds the moderating role of issues to the equation. In both countries, the results show that the hypothesized interaction between source cue and journalistic values does not vary across type of issue (politicized vs non-politicized). We therefore reject Hypothesis 4.

Table 3.

OLS Regression, predicting trust in news (The Netherlands and Sweden).

Data from The Netherlands (N = 2104)
Variable	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
Variable	b	Beta	b	Beta	b	Beta
Constant	1.08 (0.25)***		1.68 (0.30)***		1.58 (0.41)***
Source (traditional)	0.46 (0.05)***	0.15	−0.91 (0.37)*	−0.30	−1.18 (0.55)*	−0.39
Journalistic values (JV)	0.05 (0.03)^†	0.03	−0.05 (0.04)	−0.03	−0.02 (0.06)	−0.02
Issue (immigration)	0.01 (0.05)	0.00	0.01 (0.05)	0.00	0.72 (0.57)	0.24
Source *JV			0.23 (0.06)***	0.46	0.27 (0.09)**	0.54
Issue*JV					−0.04 (0.08)	−0.07
Source*issue					−0.53 (0.75)	−0.16
SourceissueJV					−0.08 (0.13)	−0.13
General media trust	0.63 (0.02)***	0.54	0.63 (0.02)***	0.54	0.63 (0.02)***	0.54
Age	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.02	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.02	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.02
Education	0.07 (0.02)***	0.07	0.07 (0.02)***	0.07	0.07 (0.02)***	0.07
Sex (female)	−0.12 (0.05)*	−0.04	−0.13 (0.05)*	−0.04	−0.12 (0.05)*	−0.04
R squared	0.35		0.35		0.35
N	2104		2104		2.104
AIC	3204		3200		3208

Data from Sweden (N = 1635)
Variable	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
Variable	b	Beta	b	Beta	b	Beta
Constant	3.05 (0.40)***		2.79 (0.48)***		3.31 (0.69)***
Source (traditional)	0.86 (0.07)***	0.27	1.45 (0.65)*	0.45	0.52 (0.97)	0.16
Journalistic values (JV)	−0.03 (0.05)	−0.01	0.01 (0.07)	0.00	−0.07 (0.10)	−0.03
Issue (immigration)	−0.02 (0.07)	−0.01	−0.02 (0.07)	−0.01	0.77 (0.98)	0.24
Source *JV			−0.09 (0.10)	−0.19	0.05 (0.15)	0.11
Issue*JV					0.14 (0.13)	0.29
Source*issue					−1.70 (1.30)	−0.49
SourceissueJV					−0.27 (0.20)	−0.45
General media trust	0.33 (0.03)***	0.26	0.33 (0.03)***	0.26	0.33 (0.03)***	0.26
Age	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.04	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.04	−0.00 (0.00)	−0.04
Education	0.04 (0.02)*	0.05	0.04 (0.02)*	0.05	0.04 (0.02)*	0.05
Sex (female)	−0.17 (0.07)*	−0.05	−0.17 (0.07)*	−0.05	−0.17 (0.07)*	−0.05
R squared	0.15		0.15		0.15
N	1635		1635		1635
AIC	3600		3602		3613

Note. Values are unstandardized coefficients and standard errors.

^†p < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed test).

As for possible differences between the Dutch and Swedish cases, we did not have any directional expectations. The results point to similar effects but also indicate some cross-country differences. First of all, in both countries trust in news is higher when the information seems to come from an established news brand. Also, references to Facebook make people trust the information less than when no designated source is given, an effect that holds in both country contexts. In addition, we see similar patterns when looking at the control variables: general media trust, level of educational attainment and gender are similarly related to the dependent variable. Finally, the absence of any issue-effects is a surprising but solid finding across contexts. While the relation between immigration and crime is a heavily politicized topic in both countries, no effect was found on trust or on the impact of the other (interacting) variables. Regarding cross-country variation, the relation between the appreciation of journalistic values and trust in news differs across countries. In the Netherlands, the impact of traditional source cues is stronger among those who assign greater importance to journalistic values. No such effect is found in Sweden. Additional analyses based on the single journalistic values items confirm these results. This could be related to a second difference we observe: average trust in the news is higher in Sweden than in the Netherlands. The same holds for the appreciation of journalistic values (in Sweden a mean of 6.32 (0.72) versus 5.94 (0.84) in the Netherlands). This might come with a certain ceiling effect, leaving less room for fluctuations. It might also explain the lower model fit, which is more than twice as good for the Dutch data compared to the Swedish data. Finally, the negative impact of a partisan website source on trust in news only holds for the Swedish context. This might be related to the fact that Samhällsnytt is better known and more used in Sweden than is The Post Online in the Netherlands.

Discussion

Summing up, this study aimed to shed light on the factors that influence trust in the news and the role of appreciation of journalistic values in that context. Running a survey with an embedded experiment allowed us to capture direct responses to exposure to news content, while running the experiment in two countries allowed us to assess the robustness of the results. Our results indicate that type of source indeed still matters. More specifically, we found that associating a piece of information with established news brands stimulates trust in the information, while associating it with an alternative website or social media platform decreases trust – all else being equal, including the content. In the Netherlands, we also found that appreciation of journalistic values moderates the positive impact of traditional source cue on trust in news. The more weight people assign to classic journalistic values, the stronger the positive effect of traditional sources on trust becomes. No such effect was found for the Swedish case. Given that there are strong arguments for why Sweden and the Netherlands should not differ in our hypotheses—such as the many similarities in media and news consumption characteristics —the differences in our findings warrant further consideration. These could be related to the fact that Sweden displayed generally higher levels of trust and appreciation of journalistic values compared to the Netherlands in our study. This, along with other potential explanations for the observed differences across the countries, should be explored in future studies.

While we expected that the trustworthiness assessment of news dealing with politicized issues would be different (strengthening the impact of source cue and values), the data did not confirm this hypothesis.

It is interesting to observe lower levels of trust in news when the associated source is Facebook. This is in line with other studies that also report lower levels of trust when information comes from a social media platform instead of an original news source (e.g., Karlsen and Aalberg, 2023; Newman et al., 2023). At the same time, intermediaries such as social media platforms have become an increasingly important route to news and their role continues to grow. This development yields important questions about the relationship between news use and trust, two concepts that are closely interconnected (Kalogeropoulos et al., 2019; Strömbäck et al., 2020; Tsfati et al., 2025) but that may have a different dynamic on social platforms. Trust might be a less important predictor of use, as people are often incidentally exposed to news on these platforms, and use might not lead to trust as the original source is constantly changing, hampering the creation of strong associations with quality (e.g. through journalistic values).

This may come with serious consequences for established news media. On the one hand, the results of this study align well with attempts by traditional news media to distinguish themselves from non-journalistic competitors by referring to their journalistic values, norms and practices. Indeed, data from the Netherlands confirm that appreciation of journalistic values leads to more trust in news stemming from these sources. However, traditional news media have great difficulties remaining as relevant in the online domain. In their battle for visibility and findability in a hypercompetitive digital world, established news brands depend precisely on those parties with whom they also compete and that may serve to undermine the value of the news brands themselves: social media platforms and search engines. As many countries witness declining levels of general media trust (Newman et al., 2022), this raises the key question whether a strong reputation in terms of trustworthiness is enough to maintain the democratic role of journalistic news media in the future.

Of course, this study is not without limitations. An experimental set-up inevitably comes with disadvantages related to external validity. We assessed trust in news by exposing participants to a single stimulus, which only captures a moment in time and does not account for any contextual influences. Participants were aware of the research context, which may have altered their focus or increased their sensitivity to social desirability. Also, the articles were short and written in a detached manner. Results may differ when dealing with other genres such as in-depth analyses or more opinion-forming articles. Second, the Facebook-condition did not account for the multi-layered nature of the platform as sender and source were not made explicit. Alternatively, the stimulus condition could have included these for example in terms of an influencer or news organization. However, as our theoretical focus was on the more general link between source cue and trust, we chose to just show the Facebook icon alongside the text. This comes at the expense of the external validity, as the stimulus material does not reflect how individuals typically come across news when using this social medium. A more fine-grained approach could have generated additional insights into the factors affecting trust (see e.g. Karlsen and Aalberg, 2023) and could have contributed to a more externally valid design. Furthermore, because of space constraints, we did not add manipulation checks. As our manipulation is straightforward, we are, however, confident that respondents picked up the source and topic discussed. Finally, conducting two identical survey experiments did not allow for any measures designed to capture country specific phenomena. For example, the journalistic values scale performed better in the Dutch context than in the Swedish one, suggesting that the underlying construct might differ across countries. The scale’s low reliability in the Swedish study necessitates a cautious interpretation of the results.

Future research could both broaden and deepen this study. First, it could be extended to more countries, allowing for a more systematic assessments of cross-national differences and similarities. Second, a more in-depth study of the Netherlands and Sweden, for example in the form of interviews and focus groups with news consumers, might be useful to unravel differential responses and in particular the differential effects we find when looking at journalistic values. In addition, such an approach would allow for a more detailed assessment of the factors driving source cue effects, and also here it would be interesting to account for possible differences across countries and also generations.

Such limitations notwithstanding, from a democratic perspective, it is essential that people are informed about societal developments and political affairs. In order to achieve this, two criteria must be met: a news media system that provides the necessary information, and a citizenry that both uses and trusts the information provided to them. In that context it is key to realize that trust in news is not a given but is rather fragile instead. The Netherlands and Sweden both have a media system that is characterized by a strong public broadcaster and high-quality newspapers (offline as well as online). And although these established news brands face an uphill battle when it comes to the growing influence of the social media platforms and political alternative media, our results show that they are still of utmost importance for trustworthiness assessments among the public. In contemporary high choice media environments with their increasing fragmentation and polarization, these institutions should be valued for what they are: sources of trust, which is hard to gain but very easy to lose.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is part of the research project ‘Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences, Cures,’ funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for the Advancement of the Humanities and Social Sciences [grant number M18-0310:1].

Ethical statement

ORCID iDs

Alyt Damstra

Elina Lindgren

Hajo Boomgaarden

Jesper Strömbäck

Yariv Tsfati

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in DANS Data Station Social Sciences and Humanities at https://doi.org/10.17026/SS/YMRWUD, V1, UNF:6:55FVQBLLx9aDcmEXyydJbA = = [fileUNF]. (Damstra, 2024)

Notes

Author biographies

Prof. dr. Alyt Damstra (PhD Communication Science, University of Amsterdam, 2020) is a professor of Knowledge and Strategic Policy Advice at the Political Science Department of the University of Amsterdam, and a research fellow at the Scientific Council for Government Policy. Her research agenda includes media content and effects, and the politicization of scientific knowledge, also in relation to policymaking.

Dr. Elina Lindgren is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political, Historical, Religious and Cultural Studies, Karlstad University. Her research interests include political communication and reality perceptions, media trust, and the dissemination of misinformation in news- and on social media.

Prof. dr. Rens Vliegenthart is a professor of Strategic Communication, Wageningen University & Research. His research focuses on the analysis of media content and effects, both on citizens and public opinion, as well as on politicians and political decision making.

Prof. dr. Hajo Boomgaarden is a professor of Methods in the Social Sciences with a focus on Text Analysis, University of Vienna. Much of his work revolves around content analyses of media portrayals of politics, media effects on political attitudes and behaviors and methodological advances of content analysis techniques.

Prof. dr. Jesper Strömbäck is a professor of Journalism and Political Communication at the Department of Journalism, Media, and Communication at the University of Gothenburg. His research interests include news journalism, political communication, medialization, media and campaign effects, opinion formation, and knowledge resistance.

Prof. dr. Yariv Tsfati is a professor of Communication Science, University of Haifa. His research focuses on various audience perceptions of media (in particular on trust in media, and the third person effect) and how these perceptions affect audience processing of media content and media effects.

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