Little change in a changing landscape: Tracking exposure to untrustworthy news in Germany from 2017 to 2024.

Abstract

In a rapidly evolving digital media landscape, understanding how exposure to untrustworthy news changes over time is essential for evaluating its potential effects on public attitudes and behavior. However, there is limited evidence on how demand for untrustworthy news develops across longer time frames. Linking web data with surveys, we compare exposure to untrustworthy news sources across demographic and political groups and over a 7-year time frame for two samples of German adults (N = 1,212 in 2017 and N = 436 in 2024). Visits to untrustworthy news sources make up less than 1% of media diets and are associated with low satisfaction with democracy and a preference for a far-right party. Propensity score matching reveals stability in untrustworthy news exposure and a subtle decline in the average quality of news diets over 7 years. Our findings suggest that concerns about rising misinformation exposure may not be borne out in desktop browsing behavior, though the absence of in-app tracking data means that mobile and social media exposure remains a question to be explored further.