Keyword – university students

Torbó, Annamária:

“I’m entertained, I’m horrified, and I become informed – all at the same time.”

The starting point of this study is that in the age of social media, news consumption is similar to entertainment consumption. We may think that our news consumption is fundamentally driven by rationality, but we are much more likely to pick the news on an emotional basis. The functions of information and of entertainment are even more closely connected to date than before, owing to memes and various infotainment videos, among other things. The communities we belong to represent similar values and have a decisive impact on which contents grab our attention. Consequently, we evaluate highly the opinions of people who are close to us and whom we follow on social media platforms. These individuals and groups also play an important role in how we assess the credibility of the news. This empirical research is based on interviews with university students aged 20 to 25, subjected to qualitative content analysis.

Keywords: credibility, emotions, group-belonging, information and entertainment, news consumption, social media, university students, journalists vs. experts