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A catastrophic media failure? Russiagate, Trump and the illusion of truth: The dangers of innuendo and narrative repetition.

Majin, G., 2021. A catastrophic media failure? Russiagate, Trump and the illusion of truth: The dangers of innuendo and narrative repetition. Journalism, 22 (10), 2548-2565.

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DOI: 10.1177/1464884919878007

Abstract

The journalistic coverage of Russiagate, between 2017 and March 2019, has been described as ‘a catastrophic media failure’. Drawing on political and social psychology, this article seeks to enrich, and refresh, the familiar journalistic concepts of agendasetting, framing and priming by combining them under the heading of the ‘news narrative’. Using this interdisciplinary approach to media effects theory, Russiagate is considered in terms of the Illusory Truth Effect and the Innuendo Effect. These effects hypothesise that the more audiences are exposed to information, the more likely they are to believe it – even when they are told that the information is unreliable. As a specific example, we focus on the stance taken by BBC News – which has an obligation to journalistic impartiality. We ask what implications arise from this analysis with regard to audience trust.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1461-670X
Uncontrolled Keywords:Agenda-setting, BBC, fake news, framing, illusory truth effect, innuendo, media effects, news narrative, priming, pseudo-facts, psychology, Russiagate, Trump
Group:Faculty of Media & Communication
ID Code:33281
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:23 Jan 2020 14:56
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 14:19

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