News Users’ (Dis)trust in Media Performance : Challenges to Sustainable Journalism in Times of Xenophobia

• In this chapter, the sustainability of journalism is explored with interest in how users express trust and distrust towards professional news media. The challenges to the sustainability of journalism have social, financial and environmental tenets. The center of attention here is the social aspect of how users negotiate the end of journalism in society. Users have conflicting views on how professional news media perform, oscillating between if the responsibility of news media should be extended to coverage of conflicting issues or to enable citizens to share a common ground imprinted by solidarity. These aspects merge and manifest in news related to issues of xenophobia and solidarity. The changed financial prospects of the news industry coincide with the timing of globalization’s effects on the local scene, where people experience increasing hurdles across the world. The sustainability of journalism—considered crucial for democracy—is currently under substantial pressure. At the same time, living conditions are deteriorating around the world. People need to migrate to other societies that are becoming ever more polarized between xenophobia and solidarity. News covering this process is constructed within a professional value system that—for the sustainability of journalism—needs to be perceived as legitimate.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Media and Communication Studies

Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)