How citizens perceive the credibility of news is increasingly important around the globe, however, there is a lack of comparative studies between nations. National identity and patriotism are important values to interfere with how people trust foreign news. Thus, we are interested in how national identity and patriotism impact readers’ perception of news credibility. Applying the theory of hostile media phenomenon, we intend to compare perceived news credibility on friendly and unfriendly news coverage among Chinese and American audiences. We chose these nations because their cultural discrepancies (collective vs. individualist culture) could generate different levels of trust in media institutions overall.
This study applies a 2 (news source: China and U.S.) by 2 (favorability: favorable and unfavorable comments) experimental design. Participants are told that they will read an article from a major Chinese or U.S. press and randomly assigned to one of the following articles with comments: 1) favorable to China, 2) unfavorable to China, 3) favorable to the U.S., or 4) unfavorable to U.S.
Participants will read an article about the recent dispute about a controversial tweet by NBA Rocket general manager Daryl Morey supporting the recent Hong Kong movement, which caused enormous opposition and boycott from Chinese fans. Then Brooklyn Nets manager Joe Tsai openly supported the Chinese fans, which also caused opposition from U.S. fans. This case is controversial with abundant discussion about the values of nationality and freedom of speech.
Independent variables include citizens’ self-confidence in fact-checking, issue involvement, perceived media bias by nation, national identity, patriotism, and issue partisanship. Dependent variables include perceived news credibility and news seeking and sharing behaviors. The sample of participants is approximately 400 respectively in China and the U.S. and will be recruited cross-nationally. The paper will be finished in mid-April as part of a big university project.