As trust to news information has declined with the exponential growth of news information, skepticism of expertise and advocating for “doing your own research” (DYOR) is advocated for more and more, according to new research by Ariel Hasell from University of Michigan and Sedona Chinn from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It is widely recognized that being informed is a normative good across domains and some skepticism is considered healthy, as blind trust is not optimal. Still, the perception that it is better to do one’s own research implies that public institutions or official sources might deliberately or unintentionally mislead the public.
There are pitfalls to the DYOR approach. It requires a high degree of effort from the audiences and the sentiment might drive people away from mainstream news to partisan news. It can then be difficult to evaluate the information. DYOR perceptions may also encourage inherent skepticism of expert information and journalists.
Some politicians also make use of populist rhetoric that pits news media against the people – particularly right-wing populism also tends to devalue deliberation and expert knowledge in decision making. Favoring DYOR is also consistent with folk theories of journalism on both sides of the political aisle where news media is seen as inherently biased.
This study examined a sample of 2070 completed surveys from YouGov, with the sample closely resembling the adult population in the U.S, when it comes to demographic characteristics. The main independent variable was “DYOR perceptions”, which was only measured in Wave 1 of the survey.
As for the other variables, news media use, measuring different U.S. news websites, and how often they used those sources. The media was categorized by partisan leaning if any. They were also queried for accuracy of election (referring to 2020 U.S. presidential elections) related beliefs using 10 true/false statements.
Still other variables were the perceived credibility of election coverage, to gauge whether the respondents believed the coverage was fair, and finally, “perceived media animus”, the belief that news media actively works against the interests of the American people: how untrustworthy they found news media and journalists.
The researchers found out that DYOR perceptions are significantly associated with the decreased use of nonpartisan media sources and increased use of conservative media sources overtime. Party identification had no moderating effect: Democrats and Independents also increased their use of conservative media with DYOR perceptions.
It is possible that DYOR perceptions, reflecting skepticism of expertise, steer people toward conservative media. In the U.S., the conservative media aligns itself with anti-elite sentiments and populism in a way that liberal media does not, and thus anti-elite participants might be drawn to conservative media regardless of party affiliation – even though hostility towards the elite was not associated with DYOR.
DYOR perceptions are associated with perceived media animus – the idea that media works against the people. Based on earlier research, anti-media sentiments can be important to the identity of a person: such people position themselves as independent thinkers and others as “sheep” who believe news.
Finally, it was found out that DYOR perceptions were associated with decreased belief accuracy when it comes to the U.S. 2020 elections, and decreased belief accuracy in science topics. This was consistent across parties, both Dems and Reps had decreased belief accuracy with increased DYOR perceptions.
In conclusion, DYOR perceptions were associated with several factors. The work is not without limitations, as it relied on self-reported media usage, for example, and had no behavioral measures.
The article “Do Your Own Research: What Skepticism of Expertise Means for the News Media in the U.S.” by Ariel Hasell and Sedona Chinn is in Political Communication. (Open access).
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