Trusting and valuing news in a pandemic: Attitudes to online news media content during COVID-19 and policy implications

Abstract

While the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to significant growth in news consumption, this did not translate into either greater trust or an improved financial situation for news providers. At a time when disinformation has become a key concern with regards to public health messaging, this mistrust of mainstream news media has potentially disastrous consequences for public communication in a time of urgent public health concerns. The article explores five issues for the study of news and trust, including the impact of digital platforms, the accountability revolution, the crisis of news media business models, the power-shift within media to platforms in the time of COVID-19, and the turn to subscription-based media. The latter raises critical issues around the value of news, and the future relationship between subscriptions, advertising revenue and public funding in the future of news publication and distribution.