Exposure to untrustworthy news media then and now: Declining news media quality over 7 years

In a rapidly evolving digital media landscape, understanding how exposure to untrustworthy news changes over time is essential for evaluating its potential effects on publicattitudes and behavior. However, there is limited evidence on how demand for untrustworthy news develops across longer time frames. Linking web data with surveys, we compareexposure to untrustworthy news sources across demographic and political groups and overa 7-year time frame for two samples of German adults (N = 1,212 in 2017 and N = 436in 2024). Visits to untrustworthy news sources make up less than 1% of media diets andare associated with low satisfaction with democracy and a preference for a far-right party.Propensity score matching reveals stability in untrustworthy news exposure, yet a notabledecline in the average quality of news diets over 7 years. These results suggest that whileuntrustworthy news exposure remains limited and stable, a broader erosion in news qualitymay pose a growing challenge for informed democratic engagement.