Untethered: Resisting Unhelpful Assumptions About News Trust and Trust in Other Social Institutions

Abstract

In both the academic and grey literature, trust in news is often connected with trust in other societal institutions, including governments, politics, businesses and non-governmental organisations. This study investigates, through a lens of social-contract theory, the extent to which we can be confident that trust in news is directly connected to trust in government and politics, and to trust in other social institutions. Using a general-elimination method, we compare trends in trust-based social relationships to see which connections between trust in the news and public institutions should be retained in future studies. To help identify these (dis)connections, we explore mixed-methods data from a longitudinal study in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our findings suggest trust in news is connected to changes in trust in other social institutions but is not tethered to them, encouraging exploration of bespoke solutions for trust issues facing public-interest journalism.