The dynamics of political information environments in the age of misinformation

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between the news consumption behavior of individuals and the types of information environments they are situated within. Investigating the transformation of politics-media-society complex in the recent atmosphere of ‘the age of misinformation’, the thesis suggests that the increasing distrust towards information and consequential critical news consumption behavior of audiences are related to the structural changes in current political information environments. Political information environments are offered to be analyzed in the levels of country and individual, respectively referring to the frameworks developed by media systems and news repertoire approaches. Conceptualizing contextually significant dimensions of these two levels, a quantitative research has been designed and presumed effects were tested for 30 countries and 61789 individuals. Results suggest that people who live in countries with a weak mainstream media and individuals who have digitally-oriented and quantitatively diverse news repertoires are significantly more likely to be critical news consumers.