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The Korean Society for Journalism & Communication (KSJCS)
[ Article ]
Korean Journal of Journalism & Communication - Vol. 68, No. 6, pp.288-319
ISSN: 2586-7369 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Dec 2024
Received 01 Aug 2024 Revised 26 Nov 2024 Accepted 28 Nov 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20879/kjjcs.2024.68.6.008

언론사에 대한 신뢰와 안심

이준웅** ; 안송이***
**서울대학교 언론정보학과 교수 jwrhee@snu.ac.kr
***오리건대학교 언론과 소통대학 박사과정 songyi.ahn5@gmail.com
Trust and Assurance in Korean News Media
June Woong Rhee** ; Songyi Ahn***
**Professor, Department of Communication, Seoul National University jwrhee@snu.ac.kr
***Ph. D. Student, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon songyi.ahn5@gmail.com

초록

신뢰란 대상에 대한 ‘신뢰할만함’에 대한 평가에 따라 달라지므로 언론 신뢰도 뉴스, 언론인, 언론사, 언론제도 등 각 대상에 따라 다르게 측정해야 한다는 문제의식으로부터 이 연구는 출발한다. 이 연구는 또한 언론사에 대한 신뢰를 안심으로부터 개념적으로 구분해야 한다고 주장한다. 언론 신뢰가 언론사의 편집의 자율성을 인정하면서 이용자 자신의 이념이나 의견과 다른 뉴스라도 일단 이용하겠다는 다짐과 관련이 있다면, 안심은 언론사의 논조나 보도 방향을 미리 예상할 수 있기에 편하게 활용할 수 있다는 생각에 접근하는 것과 가깝다고 보기 때문이다. 인터넷 패널에서 모집한 응답자 311명이 24개 언론사를 대상으로 신뢰와 안심을 평가한 자료를 이용해서, 언론사에 대한 신뢰와 안심이 경험적으로 구분가능한지, 그리고 언론사가 제공하는 뉴스 이용과 뉴스에 대한 품질평가를 비롯한 다른 변수들과 어떤 영향력 관계를 맺는지 검토했다. 연구결과, 언론사 별 신뢰와 안심 간 구성개념 타당성을 확인하기 위한 모형을 구성하는 데 성공했지만, 그 모형 내에서 신뢰와 안심 간 상관관계는 다소 높다는 것을 확인했다. 언론사 별로 측정한 뉴스 이용시간과 뉴스 품질평가가 각각 신뢰와 안심에 별도로 영향을 미친다는 사실도 발견했다. 덧붙여 이런 관계가 정치적 보수주의나 언론의 정파성 인식 등과 같은 변수들을 통제한 상태에서도 유지된다는 것을 발견했다. 이 연구는 언론사에 대한 신뢰와 안심 간 구분이 정파적 분화가 심화하는 한국 언론에 대해 갖는 함의를 검토해서 후속 연구를 위한 제안을 제시한다.

Abstract

This study addresses the ambiguity in the conceptualization and measurement of media trust, particularly in the context of declining public confidence in news media. It emphasizes the need to differentiate between trust, defined as an individual's willingness to engage with news content despite differing values or ideologies, and assurance, which reflects anticipated satisfaction and reliance on a news provider. This study also argues that an understanding of media trust requires examining its construction across multiple conceptual levels - news content, media organizations, journalists, and media systems - along with evaluating trustworthiness perceptions at each level. To empirically substantiate these claims, this study employs confirmatory factor analysis, conceptualizing trust and assurance as distinct but interrelated latent constructs to establish construct validity. Additionally, predictive validity analysis is utilized to examine the impact of news consumption patterns associated with media organizations and the evaluation of news quality provided by these entities. These factors are hypothesized to influence the latent constructs of trust and assurance independently. The study also considers the moderating effects of political conservatism and perceptions of media partisanship, incorporating these variables as controls in the analysis to account for their potential influence on the observed relationships. Our multi-level data analyses, based on evaluations from 311 respondents regarding their trust and assurance in 24 news organizations collected via an internet-based panel, indicate that the latent constructs of media trust and assurance exhibit an acceptable degree of construct validity. First, confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that trust and assurance are empirically distinct yet significantly correlated latent factors. Second, the analyses revealed that both the duration of news consumption and the perceived quality of news provided by media outlets influenced trust and assurance, with the effect of quality evaluations surpassing that of consumption duration. These findings were consistent across structural equation modeling conducted within a multi-level framework, which controlled for variance at both the respondent and media outlet levels. Third, a positive association was identified between political conservatism and both trust and assurance in the media; respondents with more conservative orientations exhibited higher levels of trust and assurance in news content. Notably, an interaction effect emerged, showing that among progressive respondents, a favorable evaluation of news quality led to increased trust levels, aligning them with those of conservative respondents. One of the implications of our findings suggests that the high levels of reported distrust in Korean news institutions may coexist with a parallel assurance toward news providers that reflect the public’s ideological and value alignments.

Keywords:

news trust, media trust, assurance, trustworthiness, news quality

키워드:

언론 신뢰, 언론제도, 신뢰와 안심, 뉴스 품질평가, 뉴스 이용, 다수준분석

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Institute of Communication Research in Seoul National University, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea(이 연구는 서울대학교 언론정보연구소와 2021년 교육부와 한국연구재단의 지원을 받아 수행됐습니다)[NRF-2021S1A5B8096358].

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