The More Competent, the More Critical?

In the context of misinformation and inaccuracies in reporting, the knowledge and understanding of news production processes and conditions are crucial for news users’ perceptions of news content. However, research on the users’ perception of errors in news and the influence of corrections and individual factors is scarce. In two online experiments, we investigated the influence of corrections, newspaper type, and news media literacy on users’ perceptions of error severity and frequency. Corrections decreased the perceived severity of errors in both studies. News media literacy increased the perceived severity of errors in political news (Study 1) but not in sports news (Study 2). Further, news-literate users perceived errors in political news as more frequent. Newspaper type did not influence user perceptions. These results support the need for transparency and the importance of user characteristics – especially news media literacy – when studying perceptions of journalistic products.

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