Public Engagement with, and Trust in, Online News Media in French-Speaking Belgium

Résumé

This paper analyzes the French-speaking Belgian public’s reception of, and trust in, online news media. Based on a qualitative research carried out in 2009-2010, it will be showed that online newsreaders hold divided conceptions of media credibility and trust, some of which fall out of the theoretical/methodological canon of current media credibility research.  Furthermore, respondents appeared to draw upon four heuristics to decide whether or not they place their trust in online news: the transparency heuristic, the accountability heuristic, the reputation heuristic, and the recommendation heuristic. The relevance of these heuristics to trust is clear insofar as they affect both newsreaders’ attributions of trustworthiness to online journalists and news media, and their willingness to engage in trusting relationships with them. At the end of the paper, some conclusions and implications for future research on trust in online news are discussed.