Abstract

The proliferation of misinformation in social media has raised concerns on the veracity of news that citizens consume. Recent scholarship has therefore emphasized the importance of news literacy as higher levels imply greater competence in navigating the streams of information in the social media space. Drawing from subsamples of respondents who use social media for news in seven democracies (UK, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, Norway, and the US, N = 6774), this comparative analysis examines the dynamics of social media news platform use that influence news literacy. After controlling for demographics, news interest and news use frequency, analyses show that social media news engagement and connections to news organizations and journalists exhibited both positive direct and indirect relationships with news literacy. Multi-platform use of social media for news was also related to engagement, but in five countries the relationship with news literacy was negative.

摘要

社交媒体中错误信息的泛滥引发了人们对公民所消费新闻真实性的担忧。因此，最近的学术研究强调了新闻素养的重要性，因为更高的水平意味着在社交媒体空间中导航信息流的能力更强。来自七个民主国家（英国、德国、丹麦、西班牙、爱尔兰、挪威和美国，N = 6774)，该比较分析考察了影响新闻素养的社交媒体新闻平台使用动态。在控制人口统计、新闻兴趣和新闻使用频率后，分析表明社交媒体新闻参与度以及与新闻机构和记者的联系与新闻素养呈现出积极的直接和间接关系。多平台使用社交媒体获取新闻也与参与有关，但在五个国家，与新闻素养的关系是负面的。