Introduction
In January of 2007, Steve Jobs announced to the world that Apple would be releasing the iPhone, a new brand of smartphone that would revolutionize the mobile industry. The iPhone combined a mobile phone, an .mp3 player, and a desktop computer into a sleek handheld device with breakthrough software programming and a simple touch screen user-interface for easy accessibility. Roy Cellan-Jones, a technology correspondent for BBC News, recalls covering the iPhone unveiling ceremony in San Francisco back in 2007, and claims that “the smartphone has been the key transformative technology of the last decade, putting powerful computers in the hands of more than two billion people and disrupting all sorts of industries” (Cellan Jones, 2017).
According to a recent report by Statista (2017), Apple sold nearly 1.5 million iPhones in 2007, and their sales have dramatically increased almost every year since, with over 200 million iPhones sold in 2015, 2016, and 2017. After more than one billion total sales, iPhones have led the global smartphone revolution (Statista, 2017). Data also shows that 77% of Americans own a smartphone in 2017, compared to 35% who owned one in 2011 (Pew Research Center, 2017). The increasing ubiquity and utility of these devices has had profound cognitive, behavioral, and societal impacts on nearly every aspect of daily life.
Ironically for Cellan-Jones and BBC News, one such industry disrupted by the smartphone boom of the last decade was news journalism. Between 2006 and 2011, daily newspaper staffs in the United States shrank by 25%, and news-producing TV stations saw a 36% drop in revenue (Gunelius, 2013). Currently, 72% of Americans reported using their mobile device(s) to get news in 2016, up from 54% in 2013 (Pew Research Center, 2016). The resulting rise in mobile news production has led to shorter stories tailored for on-the-go reading, and an increase in citizen journalism, native advertising, and clickbait journalism. All of these elements have helped to shape the perception of news for mobile audiences in the Digital Age.
With this vast change in news consumption and production as a result of smartphone use, I’m left with several questions about the effects of this societal transition. These questions cover a wide range of news consumption topics, from the amount of time spent reading news each day and per story to the amount of active participation in news by consumers. I believe these elements combine to form the basis of trust between news consumers and news producers. In this research proposal, I will examine the levels of trust in news media alongside the rise of smartphone use in the United States. I will begin by analyzing the concept of trust in the news media, and then delve into statistics and other academic research to identify trends and patterns in mobile news consumption over the last ten years, including an analysis of audience trust in the news media during the Presidential elections of 2008, 2012, and 2016. Finally, I will use my findings to develop a succinct research question for further study, and make hypotheses on the expected results of that study.
Literature Review
Section 1: Trust
Trust can be a difficult word to define when it comes to news consumption. Many people find it easier to describe trust in terms of personal relationships than with professional organizations or entities. According to a Huffington Post article from 2011, “[trust] means transparency; it means taking responsibility; it means telling the truth” (Green).
Furthermore, the article states, “lack of trust often has to do with deception—withholding truth, covering up, not being transparent” (Green, 2011). Other characteristics of trust also include consistency, reliability, and confidence. In a more recent publication, by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016), trust was defined as “being inspired by a belief in someone or something that was developed through positive experiences” (p. 19).
Reuters (2016) collected qualitative data from respondents around the world on relative trust for different institutions such as doctors, teachers, banks, government, and media. Generally, participants reported a mid-level trust in the media, claiming that it offers an important service to society by holding other institutions in check and accountable for their actions, and providing valuable information and entertainment for audiences (Reuters Institute, 2016, p. 22). However, some negative perceptions of media included a susceptibility to sensationalism and outside influence, especially within the tabloid press (p. 23). Many respondents believed that the media was under pressure from owners and other institutions, which made it more likely to sensationalize or overstate news stories (p. 23).
Through their extensive report, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2016) developed four tiers of trust in news: news content (the product), news organizations (the provider), news organization’s values, and user responsibility (p. 53). The main components of trust in news content— the first tier of the model— were identified as accuracy, impartiality, and tonality, which mean that news content should be factual and correct, balanced and fair, and presented with support from images, video, and/or strong writing to develop trust among viewers (p. 54-55). The second tier, news organizations, included aspects of capability and experience, meaning that audiences seek credible news providers with evident expertise, reach, and skilled journalists/reporters (p. 55). Many people look to a news organization’s track record and reputation, but also rely on their familiarity of the organization’s brand to help determine their levels of trust (p. 56).
The third tier of the model centers around the values of news organizations, with the audience reportedly focusing on the perceived integrity and standards of ethics/credibility among different organizations (p. 57). The final element of trust in news media, according to audiences, was the responsibility of the user to seek a plurality of sources in order to triangulate their own personal viewpoint on the matter (p. 57). This critical approach to news consumption requires additional effort by the consumer, but is especially important for stories where certain organizations may have a vested interest, such as politics.
Another institution that gathers data on media trust is Gallup, which conducts mass surveys to gauge the levels of trust among American demographics. Gallup began these surveys in 1972, and they became an annual study in 1997 (Swift, 2016). Among more than one thousand American adults surveyed in September of 2016, approximately 32% expressed a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the media, which is the lowest level in Gallup polling history (Swift, 2016). For perspective, American’s trust in the media hit a high point in 1976, amidst strong examples of investigative journalism about the Vietnam War and President Nixon’s Watergate scandal; that year, 72% of Americans expressed trust in the media (Swift, 2016). Since then, media trust has been slowly deteriorating, with the most significant drops occurring over the past ten years. Additionally, young Americans (aged 18-49)— who are more likely to own smartphone devices than their older counterparts— have reported less trust in the media than older generations, with only 26% reporting trust in 2016, compared to 38% of older Americans in the same year (Swift, 2016).
According to Swift (2016), “[trust] has consistently been below a majority level since 2007.” Coincidentally, that was the same year that the original iPhone became available to the public.
Section 2: Changes in News Consumption
Since its inception, the internet has become the most popular source of information gathering in history. In 1998, the internet boasted 50 million total users; by 2009, it had topped one billion, and in 2013, over 2.7 billion people had access to the internet, which accounted for 39% of the world’s population (Gunelius, 2013). In 1998, Google’s search engine saw 9,800 queries per day, and 3.6 million annually; by 2012, those numbers had increased by a staggering amount, jumping to 3 billion searches per day, and 1.2 trillion annually (Gunelius, 2013).
In 2016, Pew Research Center published a report titled “The Modern News Consumer” that yielded some interesting results. According to their study, young Americans (aged 18-29)—92% of whom own a smartphone— are almost twice as likely to get their news online than from television news, and are ten times more likely to get their news online than from print newspapers (Mitchell et al., 2016, p. 5). It also included that 72% of U.S. adults reported getting news from their mobile device in 2016, up from 54% in 2013 (p. 7). Furthermore, “fully seven-in-ten of those aged 18-29 either prefer or only use mobile for getting their digital news, compared with 53% of those 30-49, 29% of those 50-64, and just 16% of those 65+” (Mitchell et al., 2016, p. 7).
A separate report by Pew Research Center, titled “How Americans Encounter, Recall, and Act Upon Digital News” unearthed even more pertinent information on mobile news consumption in the Digital Age (Mitchell et al., 2017). According to the report, when online news consumers received news, 36% of the time it came from a news organization’s website or digital app, and 35% of the time the news came from social media (Mitchell et al., 2017). Respondents who said they clicked on a link to a news story were asked to recall the name of the news outlet, and “on average, they provided a name 56% of the time…it was also the case that 10% of consumers, when asked to name the source of the news, wrote in ‘Facebook’ as a specific news outlet” (Mitchell et al., 2017). According to the researchers, it was much easier for respondents to recall the name of news organizations if the news alert came directly from that organization, rather than shared from a third party like social media or an email/text message (Mitchell et al., 2017).
This hints at a potentially dangerous rising trend in news consumption, which is sharing news without reading the story. This issue was covered by the Washington Post last year: “According to a new study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked…most people appear to retweet news without ever reading it” (Dewey, 2016). One of the co-authors of that study, Arnaud Legout, was quoted saying “People are more willing to share an article than read it. This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of a summaries, without making the effort to go deeper” (Dewey, 2016). News consumers sharing entire news stories from knee-jerk visceral reactions to a headline or banner photo is giving a platform to clickbait sensationalist journalism, and, ironically, is part of the reason why many people do not trust the media. It encourages the spread of propaganda and misinformation out of a desire to ‘go viral’ online. In the busy, multi-tasking environment that smartphones have helped to facilitate, it appears that less time is being allocated to read, comprehend, reflect, and internalize information, in favor of pushing along the latest juicy tidbit of news.
Further studies were also conducted at Pew Research Center to determine how long people are spending on mobile news stories. Researchers found that for news stories containing less than 1000 words, readers are spending an average of 57 seconds, and for news stories containing more than 1000 words, readers are spending an average of 123 seconds (Mitchell, Stocking & Matsa; 2016). Even when considering that many people will leave news articles before finishing the entire story, these numbers seem very low. A speed-reading study from 2012 found that the average U.S. adult reads at a rate of about 300 words per minute, while the average college student reads about 450 words per minute, and the average “high level exec” reads about 575 words per minute (Nelson, 2012). By juxtaposing these two data sets, it would reveal that the average news story, short or long, is not being given enough time to fully comprehend— even by proficient readers— in the United States.
Part of the reason for this phenomenon of increased sharing of news and decreased reading of news is that many people are accessing their news through social media. From the above-mentioned Pew Research study, 40% of long-form readers and 43% of short-form readers accessed their news stories from a link on social media (Mitchell, Stocking & Matsa; 2016). Furthermore, the average time spent reading news stories from a social media site was noticeably lower than the overall average time spent, coming in at 111 seconds per long-form story and 52 seconds per short-form story (2016). According to the study, the social media giants Facebook and Twitter together accounted for 98% of cellphone links between social media and news sites (Mitchell, Stocking & Matsa, 2016). Facebook carried the majority of the workload, however, accounting for 82% of long-form and 84% of short-form news story connections between social media and news sites (2016).
In an effort to explain this new behavior of social media news consumption, Forbes writer Kevin Murnane made an astute observation:
Readers who are looking for news will often be motivated by the goal of learning something. If they access a long article that interests them, they are likely to be motivated to learn as much as they can through a thorough and complete reading of the article… Facebook users, on the other hand, are likely to be engaged in a social interaction if they are responding to a friend’s post when they follow a link from a Facebook page to a news website. They may be motivated more by a desire to contribute to a Facebook conversation with a comment than by a desire to learn something new (Murnane, 2016).
The ability to broadcast across different platforms allows media organizations to reach a wider audience, and, in turn, allows their consumers to identify more strongly with the organization’s brand, rather than simply the content of news. To illustrate this point, back in a 2013 open-ended survey conducted by Gallup, where researchers asked about people’s “main source of news,” 58% of participants mentioned a specific type of media (television, internet, radio, newspaper, etc.), while 30% of participants mentioned a specific media organization (CNN, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.). The same study was conducted again in 2016, and revealed significant differences: mentions of a type of media fell to 48%, and mentions of a media organization rose to 42% (Norman, 2016). Interestingly, 15% of respondents aged 18-34 (and most likely to own a smartphone) listed a social media site as their main news source in 2016—up from 3% in the 2013 study (Norman, 2016).
Also, this increasing use of social media for information gathering has even more complications for news consumption, according to the 2016 study by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The report states, “Those specifically using social media for news highlighted more active consumption, where specific brands were followed with content often shared and discussed with others (Reuters Institute, 2016, p. 62). However, it seems as if the majority of social media users are taking a more passive route to news consumption, “where content was encountered more unexpectedly when shared or commented upon by other users” (p. 62). This rise in passive news consumption has drawn from the increasing barrage of breaking news stories that flash across our screens, as the digital news cycle pursues ever-quickening turnover rates. Additionally, according to Reuters (2016), social media is an ideal platform for breaking news, “which can be provisional and raw—the trust and authority of news brands is of less importance at this initial stage, although they play a role if the story is actively pursued” (p. 59). As a result of all this, people are spending less time reading and reflecting on full news stories, and are therefore sacrificing comprehension for convenience.
Section 3: Trust & News – Presidential Elections in the Age of the Smartphone
The American news media is never more scrutinized than during presidential campaigns. In an increasingly polarized government system, tensions usually run high, and rhetoric can become heated, causing both parties to accuse the media of unfair coverage. Since the introduction of the iPhone—and beginning of the smartphone revolution—in 2007, there have been three presidential elections: in 2008, 2012, and 2016. I believe the timing of each of these elections in relation to the rise of the smartphone will shed some light on the growing overall distrust between consumers and the news media in the U.S.
According to Gallup’s annual survey of American’s trust in the media, 43% of people reported having a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in 2008 (Swift, 2016), the year of the first presidential election after the smartphones had been introduced to the population. In 2008, Democratic candidate Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate John McCain to become the first African-American President of the United States. The following year, there was a small spike in American’s trust for the media, polling in at 45% in 2009 (Swift, 2016). Trust declined slightly, but remained fairly constant for the next few years, until it dropped again for the presidential election of 2012, coming in at 40% (Swift, 2016).
In 2012, Democratic candidate Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney to serve a second term as U.S. President. Once again, there was a small rise in trust after the election year, with 44% of respondents claiming they trusted the media in 2013 (Swift, 2016). The level of trust declined to 40% for the next two years, before plummeting to 32% in 2016 (Swift, 2016) as a result of the latest presidential election. In 2016, Republican candidate Donald Trump defeated Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, and began a crusade against the mainstream media in the process, leaving the nation’s news consumers and producers alike in a swirl of confusion. Amidst evidence that false news stories promoting Donald Trump and/or smearing Hilary Clinton were mass-circulating through the internet in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, Trump began calling prestigious news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times “fake news,” adding another layer of complexity to Americans’ already dwindling level of trust in the media.
Research Question & Hypotheses
Despite the current “fake news” epidemic in the United States (and worldwide), I believe that Americans’ trust in the media will follow the pattern of the last two elections, and see an increase in 2017/2018. Trust in the media was at an all-time high in 1972, during coverage of major controversial events like the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, and there have already been multiple scandals surrounding the Trump administration and other American higher-ups since Donald Trump took office in January. These scandals, ranging from sexual assault to collusion with the Russian government, have given mainstream news organizations (and late-night talk show hosts/comedians) plenty of significant material, and I believe news consumers will begin to appreciate the journalistic profession more as these stories continue to develop in the coming year(s).
It is also my belief (and, indeed, my hope) that American news consumers will treat this “fake news” epidemic as a wake-up call, and approach their consumption of news with more diligence and responsibility going forward, especially in the next presidential election. Smartphones will only become more common within the population, and will continue to deliver news at breakneck speeds, but consumers may become more conscientious about what they choose to share and spread on social media, after the chaos surrounding the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s first year in office.
Therefore, my proposed research question is: How will the continued rise in popularity of smartphones and social media intersect to affect news consumption and trust in the mainstream media within the United States?
My hypothesis is that consumers and producers of news alike will continue to adjust and acclimate to this burgeoning technological platform of smartphones, and begin to regain trust and confidence that may have been lost during the growing pains of its first ten years of existence.
Possible Methodology
There are several ways to approach this particular research question, but I believe a qualitative approach to information gathering would be most beneficial. As I’ve referenced throughout this paper, there has been plenty of statistical quantitative data collected on smartphone ownership, social media, news consumption, and trust in the media. All of these topics should continue to be tracked over the coming years, in order to identify further statistical patterns and trends, but qualitative responses from smartphone users, social media contributors, and news followers could contribute an added layer of depth and accuracy to the research.
I propose using a series of focus groups, followed up with qualitative interviews, to better understand the effects of smartphones and social media on news consumption and trust in the mainstream media in America. The focus groups would be made up of 8-12 people, and participants would need to be smartphone owners who use their digital technology to consume news multiple times per week. In order to make the results generalizable across the nation, all age groups should be included in the study, but I think younger age groups (18-39) should make up the majority of participants, since they have proven to be more likely to own a smartphone and participate in the digital exchange of news.
Some possible discussion questions for the focus groups may include: How many times per day do you interact with news, and how has that number changed since you began using a smartphone? How often do you read or watch an entire news segment after engaging with it? How often do you share news on social media, and what inspires you to share? How much do you trust the mainstream media, and how has that changed since you began using a smartphone? How confident do you feel identifying “fake news,” and what do you normally do when you encounter a fake news story? These questions, as well as any follow-up questions that may arise during discussion, should elicit some strong responses on how smartphone use has influenced the way people interact with news today.
Additionally, a handful of focus group participants who display a willingness to participate and offer valuable insights could also be used as resources for in-depth qualitative interviews, to gain an even stronger understanding of these topics. These interviews could include more personal questions, such as: Do you think your mobile news consumption habits will change over the next three years? How so? What is your preferred method of consuming news on your smartphone? Do you have any predictions for the next step(s) in the evolution of online mobile news?
The results of these qualitative focus groups and personal interviews, when combined with the other research and literature presented in this proposal, could paint a vivid picture of the current state of mobile news consumption in the United States, and form a reliable trajectory for the future of journalism in this country. It’s a complex situation, and the future will be far from simple. As Jack Fuller (2010) put it in his book What is Happening to News, “A big thing was happening, but something seemed wrong in the way we were understanding it. I began to pull the string. The trail led me to conclusions I would have never expected that I would come to” (p. 172). And as Fuller (2010) goes on to say, “I found no villains. Just human beings trying to cope with an environment that was changing more rapidly than they knew how to handle” (p. 173).
Expected Results & Conclusion
Many readers today don’t have enough time to contemplate the content of the news they receive each day, let alone the media platforms that deliver their news. It’s difficult to predict the future in this dynamic, converged Digital Age of news, but as more people turn to smartphones and social media for news gathering and dissemination purposes, it will undoubtedly continue to yield significant individual and societal consequences. In an article from the academic journal Explorations in Media Ecology, Edgar Simpson (2017) wrote, “As digital streams dominate traditional methods of news delivery and production, better understanding the issues associated with audience involvement in reporting and sharing the news becomes ever more important” (p. 40).
One trend that will likely continue into the future of news, as a result of smartphones, is citizen journalism, or audience participation in the creation, facilitation, and dissemination of news stories. With high definition cameras, audio recorders, downloadable production tools, digital file organizers, and portable access to the internet from almost anywhere on earth, smartphones offer all the tools a citizen journalist could ever need in order to participate in news, and are now in the hands of almost every adult and teenager in the country. According to Simpson (2017), “Technology, especially social media… [allows] participants to jump platforms quickly and to act as reporters themselves. This means both audience and journalist need to be aware of the types and sources of information flowing around them” (Simpson, 2017, p. 51)
An increase in awareness of news sources, especially on social media, could greatly benefit the low levels of trust between the American public and the mainstream media going forward, because “the nature of social media has further complicated this process [of citizen journalism] by converging into a single stream of comment and reporting” (Simpson, 2017, p. 50). This increased reliance on social media from both sides of the news will challenge many traditional norms of the profession (p. 42), but may result in a more intimate relationship between the public and its media after continued adaptation. In fact, as Simpson (2017) argues, “in many ways, the audience itself can be seen as its own media stream, carrying away in its waters the bits of information from myriad sources.”
The field of journalism is working its way through the relatively uncharted territory of mobile news on smartphones, but has overcome and adapted to past technological revolutions in the form of radio, television, and desktop computers. As audiences grow and a better understanding is developed for the complexities of mobile news consumption in the coming years, it could result in levels of trust in media that haven’t been seen in the United States since the turn of the 21st century.
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