Churnalism - Replication Study

New technology and the Internet have changed the news landscape profoundly, one key change is the increasing competition and audience’s need for immediate information. Churnalism refers to the phenomenon that news agencies and journalists rely on public relations material and copy-paste instead of creating original news report. These new journalistic developments have yet to be studied from an effects perspective, as they have serious implications for the credibility and legitimacy of journalism. While perception studies of churnalism are rare, automated news experiments, as another recent development spurred by digitalization, yielded inconsistent results in terms of credibility perceptions. In how far do readers regard churnalism (operationalized as declared authorship) as credible news copy? To what extent does churnalism affect the legitimacy of the news outlet? Furthermore, does the placement of declared author information impact these perceptions? We will answer these RQs by means of a 3 (declared author: journalist vs. company vs. news agency) by 2 (placement of author information: start vs. end of article) plus a control group between-subjects online experiment. Replication design This study is a replication of a first study conducted in 2019 that tested a 3 (declared author: journalist vs. company vs. news agency) by 2 (placement of author information: start vs. end of article) between-subjects design. In this study, the journalist condition was considered the control groups, as this represents the reality. The first study in 2019 showed that churnalism did decrease perceived credibility and legitimacy, while low credibility leads to lower legitimacy. However, author location did not moderate the relationship between author and perceived credibility (see Figure 1). It also found that most participants (54.26%, n = 460) did not recognize the author correctly. Furthermore, it showed that credibility perceptions did not differ between articles written by the news agency or the journalist (see also conceptual model and results from the 2019 study, Figure 1). Intrigued by these results and after having received feedback from colleagues at a conference (and a longer break due to care duties and corona), this replication study is aimed at investigating the absolute effect of author information on credibility and legitimacy perceptions and therefore added a control group, where no author is displayed to the original experimental design. The study will replicate the entire design of the original 2019 experiment, adding this control group to investigate the absolute effect.