What Drives Perceptions of Foreign News Coverage Credibility? A Cross-National Experiment Including Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine

Research on news credibility and susceptibility to fake has overwhelmingly focused individual message-level factors explaining why people view some items as more credible than others. We argue that the consistency of message’s content with dominant mainstream narrative can have a powerful explanatory capacity well, particularly in domain international news. test this hypothesis experimentally using sample 8,559 social media users three post-Soviet countries. Our analyses suggest increases perceived foreign affairs independently their veracity. also demonstrate moderating role conflict, government support, language national contexts but not Finally, we report how effects these vary according whether are real or fabricated discuss societal implications our findings.