Less trusting news audiences tend to make hasty judgements about the credibility of news they view on platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp, according to new research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

The report–Snap judgments: how audiences who lack trust in news navigate information on digital platforms–focuses on those who trust the news the least and on their interactions with news on popular digital platforms.

It also considers how the way they think about trust differs for the different kinds of stories they come across.

The research was based on the findings from 100 in-depth interviews conducted with people across Brazil, India, the UK and the US in December 2021 and January 2022.

The report is the fifth instalment of the Trust in News Project, an initiative focused on Brazil, India, the UK and the US–four countries accounting for more than one billion internet users and encompassing a wide range of media systems and contexts.

Other key findings include:

• Few of those interviewed tended to click through the news links they came across on platforms, instead relying on snap judgments about its credibility based on limited information.
• ‘Generally untrusting’ audiences only rarely encounter news on digital platforms and are mostly indifferent towards it.
• Topic relevance played a key role in how this group talked about trust, with politics and politicised subjects singled out as content many avoided or approached with caution.
• Interviewees pay attention to different indicators specific to each platform–such as comments and likes–to help contextualise news they encountered.
• Many in this group are unsure about how platforms determine what information to show them.