The Double Disconnect: Skepticism about Public Economic Data and Distrust in Media Discourse about the Economy
This study examines two questions: whether members of the public perceive discrepancies between economic data and their own assessments of economic conditions and how they explain discrepancies they recognize. Drawing on 78 interviews and 12 focus groups conducted with residents of three U.S. cities...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
SAGE Publishing
2025-06-01
|
| Series: | Socius |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231251349055 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | This study examines two questions: whether members of the public perceive discrepancies between economic data and their own assessments of economic conditions and how they explain discrepancies they recognize. Drawing on 78 interviews and 12 focus groups conducted with residents of three U.S. cities, the author finds an overwhelmingly common pattern of interpretation following a logic of double disconnect. People saw economic data as disconnected from reality and irrelevant to their lives. They also understood the ubiquity of these data in media discourse as evidence of elites’ and experts’ own disconnect from the concerns of ordinary citizens. This reasoning was not confined to conservatives or populists prone to institutional distrust but rather commonplace across respondents with varied political beliefs and partisan affiliations. These findings show that the ambiguous meaning of economic data, a factor unrelated to ideology or polarization, is a salient factor consolidating broad-based distrust in media discourse about the economy. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2378-0231 |