rust in news, social media, digital news consumption, Public Service
Broadcaster, press freedom
The changes in how people consume news and the emergence of digital and distributed
news sources call for a reexamination of the relationship between news use and trust in
news. Previous research had suggested that alternative news use is correlated with lower
levels of trust in news, whereas mainstream news use is correlated with higher levels of
trust in news. Our research, based on a survey of news users in 35 countries, shows that
using either mainstream or alternative news sources is associated with higher levels of
trust in news. However, we find that using social media as a main source of news is
correlated with lower levels of trust in news. When looking at country effects, we find that
systemic factors such as the levels of press freedom or the audience share of the public
service broadcaster in a country are not significantly correlated with trust in news.