How does Performance Impact the Legitimacy of News Media? An Audience Perspective

    19 February 2026

    LISS 2025. Authors: Marc Verboord (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam – Erasmus School of History, Culture, and Communication).

    This research will study the notion of legitimacy in journalism in the Netherlands from an audience perspective. Respondents will receive vignettes with fictious descriptions of how specific media types (social media, public broadcasters, private broadcasters) report on an emergency event. Theoretically relevant elements of the report (immediacy, accuracy, depth, bias perceptions) are manipulated and varied in different versions of the vignette. Vignettes are evaluated in terms of how legitimacy is perceived. This enables us to assess the relative importance of these media performance elements, while also taking into account personal background of the respondent (like political orientation).

    Picture by Planet Volumes For Unsplash+