News media (dis)trust as a media ecosystem property. Exploring the discrepancy of expectations between citizens and journalists

Trust in the media needs to be analysed in terms of the expectations that citizens have concerning them. Although news media trust has been consistently measured and monitored from a quantitative perspective, citizens are hardly ever asked to speak about what they expect from journalism. Moreover, their expectations have rarely been compared to journalists’ assumptions about the nature of their work. To contribute to filling this gap in the literature, drawing on 40 interviews with Italian young adults and 40 interviews with Italian political journalists, and adopting an ecosystem approach, this study investigates the ‘folk theories’ and ‘deep stories’ of young adults about journalism and juxtaposes them with the working values of information professionals. The findings show that, although young adults and journalists share the same idea of journalism, due to a negative ‘folk theory’ and ‘deep story’ about journalists widespread among young adults, an unfavourable situation for the spread of news media trust emerges.