Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Reed College of Media

Department

Not Listed

Committee Chair

Geah Pressgrove

Committee Co-Chair

Julia Fraustino

Committee Member

Julia Fraustino

Committee Member

Elizabeth Oppe

Committee Member

Elizabeth Cohen

Abstract

This study examines the effects of interpretive journalism on trust and credibility perceptions. Specifically, this study investigates interpretive journalism in the context of political news coverage and also examines the relationship between political ideology and the aforementioned variables. This study uses a 2 (interpretive journalism; fact-based journalism) x 2 (political ideology: conservative leaning; liberal leaning) between-subjects online experiment to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings illustrate the predictive value of credibility to trust within the context of political news coverage. Additionally, this study shows that individuals exhibit higher perceptions of trust and credibility towards fact-based political coverage as opposed to interpretive political coverage. Preliminary findings also indicate that conservatives exhibit lower perceptions of trust and credibility towards interpretive political news coverage than their liberal counterpart.

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