People around the world have access to a variety and volume of information like never before.

Navigating this abundance of sources online poses real challenges, especially amid widespread fears of misinformation and outright disinformation. Some have clear, go-to news sources they generally trust to provide them with accurate information. For them, trust serves as an ‘institutional economiser’ of sorts, eliminating the need to independently verify information themselves (Coleman 2012; Rosanvallon 2008). But less is known about how those who lack trust in most news sources – a sizeable and possibly growing percentage of the population in many countries (Toff et al. 2021c) – form assessments around which sources to attend to and which to ignore. Moreover, crowded digital information environments where platforms, especially big platforms such as Facebook and Google, loom large, pose unique challenges for news organisations that seek to stand out and sustain trusting relationships with audiences.

In this report, we qualitatively examine how audiences who lack trust in most news organisations in their countries navigate the digital information environment, especially how they make sense of the news they encounter while using social media, messaging applications, or search engines. Drawing on a sample of 100 individuals in four countries – Brazil, India, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) – we centre on how they use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Google, based on a unique interviewing approach anchored in their concrete everyday experiences. Participants were asked to describe and respond to what they actually saw on their screens as they navigated these platforms in real time while speaking to members of our research team.

This research is focused on individuals with minimal trust in most news sources and belowaverage interest in politics – a population often neglected in audience research since these individuals tend to be least likely to consume news. However, for that same reason, understanding the way they encounter and engage with information online is of particular importance. Indeed, in line with prior survey-based research (Toff et al. 2021c), we found these individuals tended to be indifferent towards, or even opposed to, the idea of receiving news through platforms, which they said they primarily used for other purposes.