Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2025
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Myllylahti, Merja
Treadwell, Greg
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Report
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AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD)
Description
This is the sixth report about trust in news in Aotearoa New Zealand produced by the AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD). The trust survey that informs the report was completed in collaboration with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. With permission from the Institute’s researchers, we used the same survey questions to investigate trust in news and a comparable sampling method to the one used in their annual Reuters Digital News Reports to measure news trust. This allows us international comparisons with Aotearoa New Zealand about levels of trust in the news. In 2024, the Reuters survey covered 47 countries. Similarly to the Reuters survey, in 2025 we asked New Zealanders about their news consumption, news sources, news avoidance, misinformation and paying for news. We added new questions to the survey to gain better understanding of New Zealanders news interests, news brand consumption and importance of certain aspects that make them trust/distrust specific news organisations. We also asked participants about their political leaning to enhance our understanding of links between news trust, political leaning and news consumption. We added a new question about New Zealanders’ views on news produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). Our questions mirrored those in the Reuters study, allowing us international comparisons about these related issues. As in 2020-2024, survey data for our 2025 report was collected by New Zealand online market research company Horizon Research Ltd. In addition to survey findings, the report includes some key findings from two focus groups with New Zealanders, aged 18-34 and 55-64, held in May 2024.
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AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD). https://www.jmadresearch.com/trust-in-news-in-new-zealand
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Rights statement
This report is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International. When reproducing any part of this report—including tables and graphs—full attribution must be given to the report author(s). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/