IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v10y2022i2p169-179.html

Skeptical Inertia in the Face of Polarization: News Consumption and Misinformation in Turkey

Author

Listed:
  • Çiğdem Bozdağ

    (Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands / Department of Intercultural Education, University of Bremen, Germany)

  • Suncem Koçer

    (Department of Public Relations and Information, Kadir Has University, Turkey)

Abstract

Focusing on Turkey, this article analyzes the role of polarization on news users’ perception of misinformation and mistrust in the news on social media. Turkey is one of the countries where citizens complain most about misinformation on the internet. The citizens’ trust in news institutions is also in continuous decline. Furthermore, both Turkish society and its media landscape are politically highly polarized. Focusing on Turkey’s highly polarized environment, the article aims to analyze how political polarization influences the users’ trust in the news and their perceptions about misinformation on social media. The study is based on multi-method research, including focus groups, media diaries, and interviews with people of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. The article firstly demonstrates different strategies that the users develop to validate information, including searching for any suspicious information on search engines, looking at the comments below the post, and looking at other news media, especially television. Secondly, we will discuss how more affective mechanisms of news assessment come into prominence while evaluating political news. Although our participants are self-aware and critical about their partisan attitudes in news consumption and evaluation, they also reveal media sources to which they feel politically closer. We propose the concept of “skeptical inertia” to refer to this self-critical yet passive position of the users in the face of the polarized news environment in Turkey.

Suggested Citation

  • Çiğdem Bozdağ & Suncem Koçer, 2022. "Skeptical Inertia in the Face of Polarization: News Consumption and Misinformation in Turkey," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 169-179.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:169-179
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v10i2.5057
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/5057
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v10i2.5057?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Özlem Kaygusuz, 2018. "Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Regime Security in Turkey: Moving to an ‘Exceptional State’ under AKP," South European Society and Politics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 281-302, April.
    2. Ro'ee Levy, 2021. "Social Media, News Consumption, and Polarization: Evidence from a Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(3), pages 831-870, March.
    3. Osmundsen, Mathias & Bor, Alexander & Vahlstrup, Peter Bjerregaard & Bechmann, Anja & Petersen, Michael Bang, 2021. "Partisan Polarization Is the Primary Psychological Motivation behind Political Fake News Sharing on Twitter," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(3), pages 999-1015, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James N. Druckman & Donald P. Green & Shanto Iyengar, 2023. "Does Affective Polarization Contribute to Democratic Backsliding in America?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 708(1), pages 137-163, July.
    2. Eugen Dimant, 2024. "Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(1), pages 1-31, January.
    3. Eugen Dimant, 2020. "Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 029, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    4. Marta Serra-Garcia, 2026. "The Attention-Information Trade-Off," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 116(5), pages 1579-1610, May.
    5. Çiğdem Bozdağ & Suncem Koçer, 2022. "Skeptical Inertia in the Face of Polarization: News Consumption and Misinformation in Turkey," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 169-179.
    6. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    7. Germano, Fabrizio & Gómez, Vicenç & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2026. "Ranking for engagement: How social media algorithms fuel misinformation and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    8. Ying Bao & Jessie Liu, 2025. "Spiral of Silence: How Neutral Moderation Polarizes Content Creation," CESifo Working Paper Series 12008, CESifo.
    9. Luca Braghieri & Ro'ee Levy & Hannah Trachtman, 2025. "Frictions in News Consumption: How to Improve the Social Media News Diet," EconPol Forum, CESifo, vol. 26(04), pages 12-16, October.
    10. Felix Chopra & Ingar Haaland & Fabian Roeben & Christopher Roth & Vanessa Sticher, 2025. "News Customization with AI," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 372, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    11. Nicolás Ajzenman & Bruno Ferman & Pedro C. Sant'Anna, 2025. "Discrimination in the Formation of Academic Networks: A Field Experiment on #EconTwitter," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 357-375, September.
    12. Maurizio Pugno, 2024. "Social media effects on well‐being: The hypothesis of addiction of a new variety," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(3), pages 690-704, August.
    13. Ester Faia & Andreas Fuster & Vincenzo Pezone & Basit Zafar, 2024. "Biases in Information Selection and Processing: Survey Evidence from the Pandemic," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(3), pages 829-847, May.
    14. Nicolás Ajzenman & Bruno Ferman & Pedro C. Sant’Anna, 2023. "Rooting for the Same Team: On the Interplay between Political and Social Identities in the Formation of Social Ties," Working Papers 231, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    15. Barbaro, Salvatore, 2025. "Election methods and political polarization," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    16. Beknazar-Yuzbashev, George & Ichiba, Sota & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2025. "To the Depths of the Sunk Cost : Experiments Revisiting the Elusive Effect," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1544, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    17. Zeng, Jing & Brennen, Scott Babwah, 2023. "Misinformation," Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin, vol. 12(4), pages 1-20.
    18. Joshua A. Confer & Allison M. Champ & Dorsa Amir & Hanna Schleihauf & Jan M. Engelmann, 2025. "Group membership biases children’s evaluation of evidence," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-13, December.
    19. Beknazar-Yuzbashev, George & Jiménez Durán, Rafael & McCrosky, Jesse & Stalinski, Mateusz, 2025. "Toxic content and user engagement on social media: Evidence from a field experiment," Working Papers 359, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    20. Sacha Altay & Emma Hoes & Magdalena Wojcieszak, 2025. "Following news on social media boosts knowledge, belief accuracy and trust," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 9(9), pages 1833-1842, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v10:y:2022:i:2:p:169-179. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.