The link between changing news use and trust : longitudinal analysis of 46 countries

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Fletcher, Richard and Andı, Simge and Badrinathan, Sumitra and Eddy, Kirsten A. and Kalogeropoulos, Antonis and Mont'Alverne, Camila and Robertson, Craig T. and Arguedas, Amy Ross and Schulz, Anne and Toff, Benjamin and Kleis Nielsen, Rasmus (2024) The link between changing news use and trust : longitudinal analysis of 46 countries. Journal of Communication. jqae044. ISSN 0021-9916 (https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae044)

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Abstract

Changing levels of public trust in the news are of deep concern to both researchers and practitioners. We use data from 2015 to 2023 in 46 countries to explore how trust in news has changed, while also exploring the links with sociodemographic variables, differences by media system, and changing patterns of news use. We find that (a) there has been a small overall decline in trust in news since 2015, but also that (b) there are different trends in different countries. More specifically, trust has declined more in media environments that have become less structured by television news use, and increasingly structured by social media news use. Our findings underscore how changing structures of media use may be central to explaining trust dynamics in recent years, which suggests new avenues for restoring trust where it has eroded.

ORCID iDs

Fletcher, Richard, Andı, Simge, Badrinathan, Sumitra, Eddy, Kirsten A., Kalogeropoulos, Antonis, Mont'Alverne, Camila ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-4879, Robertson, Craig T., Arguedas, Amy Ross, Schulz, Anne, Toff, Benjamin and Kleis Nielsen, Rasmus;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)