Mid Sweden University

The research reported here extends the work of Jacobsen (2018) on how young citizens evaluatenews media credibility by exploring why high school students perceive some news media asmore credible than others and how they reason about and evaluate what credibility means fromtheir own perspective. The study also examined which criterias the students accredit a crediblenews media, and how these criterias correlate with the ones other studies have reached. Toexamine this we conducted two focus groups consisting of 12 participants in total, with 6 in eachfocus group from two different high schools located in Sundsvall in northern Sweden. All theparticipants answered a questionnaire before the focus group began which collected backgroundvariables of their media usage. The focus groups which followed were conducted with the helpof pre existing questions brought from Jacobsens (2018) study.The main results of the study revealed that the participants seemed to consume the news mediathey evaluated as less credible more and the news media they evaluated as more credible less.Which may seem as a paradox, although it appears as though the participants are aware of theirchoice of media usage, and they seem to use media, not only according to the quality of a mediaand to gain relevant information about the society, but also to make the time pass and forpleasure which may open up for media usage of news media they evaluate as less credible.