‘Social Media Help Me Distinguish between Truth and Lies’: News Consumption in the Polarised and Low-trust Media Landscape of Greece

Abstract

How do citizens in countries with weak institutions and highly disrupted media landscapes navigate news? We examine a typical South European case, Greece, via cross-national data sets. Combining data from a pool of different surveys, we show that in Greece – unlike the other five countries of the sample – social media are more trusted than news media to help individuals navigate their news environment. A thematic analysis of open-ended survey answers indicates that Greek respondents embrace alternative news sources (social media, digital-born outlets) in record-high numbers because of their distrust of traditional news outlets. Taking into account the historic interplay of media and political institutions, we present Greece as a dystopian case for news organisations and the information environment in countries with weak institutions.