Equally (mis)trusted? Trust in Media and Trust in Social Institutions

The phenomenon of media trust has been on the agenda of researchers for a long time. Today, with the growing amount of information and sources of information in the era of post-truth, the issue of trust in the media is becoming even more relevant. The previous research in this regard was presented by case studies and comparative studies of democratic, most often European states and the USA. The goal of this study is to look at the phenomenon of trust in the media through the prism of political regimes, democratic and undemocratic. The study aims to answer two research questions: What is the relationship between trust in media and trust in social institutions in different regimes? What affects media trust in different regimes? The theoretical framework is built, first, on the individual-level characteristics of people and how they affect media trust. And second, on the institutional theories that claim that the system in which individuals live also affects their level of trust. The World Value Survey data is used in the analysis. There are several important findings that the research makes. There are no clear patterns regarding the variation of media trust depending on a political regime. Trust in media and trust in social institutions correlate in both regimes, but more strongly in non-democracies. The same individual-level characteristics affect trust differently depending on the regime. Out of all the macro-level variables only perception of corruption seems to influence media trust