Trust in News and Trust through News

What is it about?

Trust in media as a mediator of information is essential for democratic governance. First, media is an instrument of social and political trust building: Through media citizens are formed and socialized as trustful members of a political community. Also, news, media outlets and journalists themselves are objects of trust. And the degree to which people trust the media and its products has important consequences for the legitimacy of government. Social media seems to undermine this trust. With data from our own survey, we try to answer the question whether this is the case, and show how trust correlates with patterns of media consumption. We find that consumption of legacy media increases social, political and media trust, whereas social media use demonstrates differing platform-specific patterns. However, social media not only destroys trust. We also could state some country differences in terms of how media consumption is related to trust.

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