Hostile Legacy Media, Friendly Social Media? Exploring Young People’s Use, Trust, and Bias Perception of Different News Sources About the Middle Eastern Conflict

With the Middle Eastern conflict escalating in the final months of 2023, news on the topic was covered not only by legacy media but also shared by famous personalities and ordinary users on social media platforms. Especially for young people’s news diets, these novel news sources play an increasingly relevant role, yet their usage and perception remain mostly unexplored. Multilevel models using data from a quota-based cross-sectional youth survey in Austria suggest that, in the context of the current Middle Eastern conflict, information from ordinary users and legacy media is equally used and trusted, ahead of social media personalities. Additionally, we find evidence for a hostile bias that young people perceive in legacy media content, whereas ordinary users are seen as exhibiting a friendly bias. These findings draw attention to the need for a nuanced understanding of news consumption in the digital realm, especially in the context of conflicts and crises.