News Credibility and Media Literacy in the Digital Age

Abstract

With the hostile media phenomenon as an overarching framework, this chapter discusses how challenging it can be for media literacy education to successfully combat motivated reasoning in which individuals are likely to be hostile when exposed to news content that is incongruent with their personal point of view. Such discussion is vital in times when news audiences are cynical and skeptical towards both politicians and media agencies. Given the importance of understanding and studying individuals' perceptions of news biases and assessments of news credibility, this chapter makes a case for establishing more objective standards for journalistic work to overcome the challenges brought about by the rise of fake news in the digital era.