Media Pluralism in the Digital Environment From the Users’ Point of View

Abstract

The rapid development of communication platforms and services on the Internet created the conditions for greater audience participation in the online sphere. Parallel to the emergence of new communication spaces in which different ideas, opinions, and attitudes can be generated, there is a trend of algorithmic arrangement of content that is distributed to media users. Cognitive horizon narrowing, fake news, and public polarization are just a few of the consequences of these algorithmic calculations. Media pluralism, which is seen as an essential quality and norm of a democratic and informed society, is facing unique challenges. Given that previous researchers of media pluralism did not consider users’ perspectives, this exploratory study aims to identify media users’ perceptions and interpretations of the phenomenon. From the perspective of the user, the paper examines four dimensions of media pluralism: access to news sources and quality journalism; credibility, trust in the media, and attitudes toward misinformation; media transparency, and the ability to locate or avoid news (Klimkiewicz, 2019). An online questionnaire was used to collect the data. The conclusion is that ignoring citizen journalism and communication with media users, as well as the lack of opportunities for users to manage information in the online space, leads to an increase and deepening of the gap between the media and users.