Programma della conferenza
VII “Non c’è più tempo!” Crisi ed emergenze nella società contemporanea / Cagliari, 19/20 giugno 2025
In un’epoca segnata da crisi ricorrenti e da un senso di urgenza perpetua, il concetto di tempo emerge come una lente imprescindibile per analizzare e comprendere la società contemporanea. Il convegno SISCC 2025, organizzato dalla “Società Scientifica Italiana di Sociologia, Cultura e Comunicazione”, intende riflettere sulle molteplici declinazioni del tempo nel contesto delle crisi odierne, esplorando come l’accelerazione dei ritmi di vita e la proliferazione delle emergenze stiano ridefinendo dimensioni fondamentali dell’educazione, della comunicazione e della vita quotidiana.
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Daily Overview |
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Sessione 2 - Panel 10: Giornalismo e informazione in trasformazione Luogo, sala: Aula 13 (A1-C) Chair di sessione: Carlo Sorrentino | |
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Rethinking Media Trust and News Efficacy in the Contemporary Information Ecosystem 1: Università di Bologna, Italia; 2: Università di Milano, italia; 3: Universität Wien, Austria This study leverages a survey to be administered to a representative sample of the Italian population in February 2025 to propose novel measures for investigating news media trust and the underexplored yet pivotal concept of news efficacy. Empirically, it explores the relationship between these two dimensions, aiming to shed light on their interplay within today’s information ecosystem. Recent advancements in news media trust research challenge traditional definitions of trust as a mere attitude, suggesting instead that trust entails a decision to suspend vulnerability and uncertainty toward news media (Blöbaum, 2021). While prior studies employing this conceptual shift have predominantly relied on qualitative methods (Garusi and Juarez Miro, 2024), this paper extends the approach to a quantitative framework. Specifically, respondents are asked to evaluate the extent to which their decisions across various domains—including economics, health, environment, politics, lifestyle, and entertainment—have been taken by relying on the news consumed. The current media environment is characterized by contested truths and misinformation (Waisbord, 2018) and the rise of novel actors, like the so-called “newsfluencers” (Hurcombe, 2024), establishing novel relational patterns with their audiences. Hence, we hypothesize that individuals’ self-perception of “news efficacy” plays a central role in shaping trust decisions. To date, journalism studies have primarily conceptualized news efficacy through its internal dimension—i.e., an individual’s belief in their ability to comprehend and engage with news content (Park and Kaye, 2021; Hopp, 2022). However, drawing on the political science construct of political efficacy, which encompasses both internal and external dimensions, we argue that incorporating an external dimension of news efficacy could enrich both the explanatory potential of the concept and our broader understanding of news trust. We thus define—and measure accordingly—external news efficacy as a person’s belief in their capacity to influence the newsmaking process and their perception of the media system’s responsiveness and utility for them. By integrating this external perspective and advancing novel measures of news media trust, the study contributes both empirically and theoretically to the field of news media trust research, offering a comprehensive framework for analyzing trust dynamics in the contemporary information ecosystem. | |