The spread of fake news through social media platforms is making readers to turn to reliable content from reputable news organisations, says a media researcher.
During the "Digital News Consumption Trends - How to Take Advantage and Stay Ahead of the Competition” plenary session at Digital Media Asia (DMA) 2024 on Thursday (April 25), Amy Ross Arguedas, a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, said according to her studies, the younger generation is suspicious of most news they see online, and due to that, they rely on a handful of selected news organisations that they trust.
Meanwhille, Australia's The Daily Aus co-founder Sam Koslowski said the crucial part of ensuring public trust is for media organisations to be more detailed and precise when presenting the news.
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00:00We heard about the disconnect between media organisations and young audiences.
00:11The trained media people versus influencers, and they are getting more hits than us.
00:21Younger people preferring video for news, and not necessarily from your news websites.
00:30This is actually quite discouraging.
00:34Is there any reasons for hope?
00:37What can we do?
00:39In a lot of ways, the scenario is bleak.
00:41There are really difficult numbers.
00:44There are very clear challenges, especially when it comes to younger audiences.
00:49At least in the data that I shared now and that we have been collecting.
00:54I think that there are also reasons to be hopeful or more optimistic.
00:59One of the things that comes to mind has to do with Trusted News.
01:02I worked on the Trusted News project before joining the Digital News Report team.
01:07For three years, we focused on trying to better understand what's going on with Trusted News.
01:11One of the clear findings that we've seen in that data and the Digital News Report data
01:15on trust is that people do trust news from news organisations more than they trust just
01:21random news on social media.
01:22There's a big difference.
01:25I think in the current information environment, people often do struggle to distinguish what
01:31they can believe, what they can't believe.
01:34That advantage that news organisations have, I think that it's worth something.
01:41I think with AI, it's kind of hard to predict how that's going to impact the information
01:45environment, but you could see that even magnifying some of these concerns.
01:49I do think that news organisations have a role to play there.
01:53That we don't have deferential audiences that just say yes, okay, and assume that everything
01:57that news organisations say is true, yes, that's the case.
02:01It's also true that even though when we look at some of the overall figures of Trusted
02:06News and see that some of them are quite low, when we look at individual news brand trust
02:10figures, we see that there are people that might not trust most news, but they do trust
02:14a handful of reputable organisations and they use those to navigate the information environment.
02:20It doesn't mean that those people are trusting nothing.
02:23It just means that they might be more selective in where they're placing their trust.
02:27I think it's definitely a challenge, but there's definitely space for that.
02:32Just one last comment having to do with the news avoidance.
02:36Like I pointed out, we're always looking for things that are actionable.
02:39I think when we ask people why they're avoiding the news, they're quite clear in why they're
02:44avoiding the news.
02:45I think it's incumbent on news organisations, if they're trying to, in fact, reach those
02:51specific audiences, to think about what it is that they're interested in and what they're
02:55open to hearing about and finding ways to balance that with their own internal missions
03:00as news organisations.
03:02I think that those are at least a couple of areas where there's a clear role for news
03:05organisations to play, even as how to do it is challenging.
03:10I think that it's a wake-up call for many media companies that, for a long time, believed
03:17that it's enough to just change the sole business model, meaning getting from print or traditional
03:24TV to digital, and the rest, the content, the distribution, may stay the same.
03:34What makes me particularly hopeful is, for instance, the fact that it becomes a survival
03:41skill for young people to be suspicious, and the reports say that they are twice as much
03:48willing to fact-check the news than older people, because they learned from the very
03:53beginning, like for Gen Alpha, it's like that's the aquarium they're swimming in.
04:02Everything is suspicious.
04:03You need to check everything, not only news, but also content creators, their credibility,
04:08their past, their associations.
04:12Of course, I guess it's not the place to discuss all these dramas that are happening on TikTok,
04:18but I think this is a very, like they're performing really civic obligations to fact-check also
04:26other people that take space.
04:30One more thing about the trust.
04:36I genuinely believe that the trust is conditional, right?
04:44I think this is the idea of the old times, like trust in religion, unconditional trust,
04:49trust in something.
04:50The reality right now is that everything's conditional, and we need to earn the trust
04:55every day.
04:57If we remember about that, like every day is a challenge, but also every day you can
05:02win them, right?
05:04And for me, that's the most inspiring thing that you can get out of the situation, which
05:11is of course challenging, but I see many ways out.
05:16Yeah, I mean, I agree with Danuta a lot in terms of there's a reason why young people
05:21don't trust news, and that's because it's broken.
05:24It's broken because of failures, systemic failures in news companies.
05:30I worked for a little startup called News Corp for five years.
05:36Lovely guy called Rupert Murdoch is one of, I share a nationality with him, and that's
05:42kind of where it ends.
05:45But there's some serious damage that we are now recovering from.
05:48I mean, we feel it particularly in Australia, with young people in Australia.
05:53We have two media companies that own 80% of the landscape, and one of them is News
05:59Corp and the other one's Nine, and they are both misbehaving news companies.
06:05And we have had, even as recently as last week, we had a stabbing in Sydney.
06:11Six people killed.
06:13Our largest broadcaster names the wrong perpetrator on national television.
06:20Like, no wonder we don't trust it.
06:24And so we are now, it's like climate change.
06:28We are now the generation that has to unpick that, and it's going to take time and effort
06:33and pain, and it's going to be a slow, slow burn.
06:38But if we don't do that, we are on a very dangerous trajectory.
06:42And what we actually need is evidence-based, research-based approaches to news, whether
06:49that means that we're linking out to primary sources so our audience can see how we're
06:54doing our jobs, whether that's more media literacy content, whatever it might be, we
06:58need to all be okay with the fact that we stuffed it up, and now we need to unstuff
07:03it.
07:04Sorry to anyone who's feeling bad now.
07:08I have a question about trust.
07:10I was very interested to hear you talking about trust a lot, and I feel like for the
07:15last 200 years, we've relied on the print masthead to convey trust in our industry.
07:21When you're building brands, not from a generation who is literate with print mastheads, what
07:29are your top tips for building trust?
07:32Top tips for building trust, showing up.
07:35And what that means is ensuring that you are consistently the safe place for information.
07:41Every single day, every single night, for years and years and years.
07:46Trust has to be earned, and there is no glamorous way for young, new companies, or even established
07:54legacy companies, to show that they're trustworthy besides form.
07:58And I think, going back to that stabbing in the network that names the wrong perpetrator
08:03– who, by the way, is now suing the network and is going to get a lot of money – they
08:09have just diminished their trust now for, I'd say, the next five years.
08:14And so, it's that mindset that journalists should have in the newsroom of two, three
08:20words could be the difference between trust and no trust.
08:23And that should keep journalists on their toes.
08:26It should make them feel like they have a big weight of responsibility, because it is
08:30an absolute honour to be a reporter and to be conveying information to a group of people,
08:36and that is a really serious responsibility.
08:39I just wanted to add that I think we need to get back to the roots and realise that
08:48media companies, especially big media companies, are seen as the evil corpse, as the parts
08:53of the problem.
08:55For many people, they position themselves in their heads, in their perception, just
08:59next to Meta and Google and all the companies that just wait for their money and for their
09:06moment of disorientation to sell them something, be it a good or a service or an ideology.
09:16So I think the key to this is transparency, and that's something that some companies
09:25dare to do, like share a little bit about how they're financed or how they spend money,
09:30what they spend money on.
09:31Second thing, showing your face, not hiding behind the brand, but showing the real people
09:40working hard for the common good.
09:45There are also great examples of companies that do it, but still, it's just a beginning.
09:53But somehow, I think we're circling back to the very beginning of storytelling and sharing
09:59the news, I would say.
10:01That's how I see it, in cycles.