Does News Diversity Work Among Audiences? A Citizen Experiment

Abstract

Scholarly and policy debates alike frequently highlight the normative value of news diversity as a necessary prerequisite for journalism to optimally fulfil its watchdog function in democratic societies. Various studies have sought to conceptualise news diversity and/or to operationalise it from the vantage point of journalists and newsrooms as news content producers. However, very little remains known about how news diversity is received and perceived by audiences. In this paper, we outline an audience experiment carried out among Flemish (Belgian) adult citizens (N = 208) to examine whether enhanced viewpoint diversity in news content affects its perceived diversity and credibility. Using news content focusing on one controversial and one more politically moderate topic to assess differences in the perception of news content diversity, we find that high viewpoint diversity is observed by audiences whereas low viewpoint diversity is not. Moreover, news articles with only one viewpoint that matched their own were perceived as more credible. We conclude that researchers and policymakers can only advance the ongoing important debate on news diversity if they choose to pay more attention to how audiences (don’t) engage with it.