Trust in Anonymous News? How Users Navigate Political News Channels on Russian Telegram

Anna Litvinenko () and Anna Smoliarova
Additional contact information
Anna Litvinenko: Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Anna Smoliarova: DAAD Center for German Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190500, Israel

Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: The paper explores the phenomenon of anonymous news channels on Russian Telegram, which have become increasingly popular in recent years. Drawing on 25 self-confrontation interviews, we answer the following questions: Do users trust anonymous news? If not, why do they keep using this information source? How does a restrictive socio-political context influence users’ trust in alternative news sources? Our results show that, in Russia, the concept of trust is linked to the normative democratic understanding of journalistic functions. At the same time, many users believe that trust in media is not at all necessary and develop individual strategies to navigate a “chaos of narratives”. The paper discusses Telegram’s role in shaping trust or distrust in news.

Keywords: trust in media; Telegram; anonymous news; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/4/180/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/4/180/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:13:y:2024:i:4:p:180-:d:1361576

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().