Media Trust and Media Use

Abstract

This article uses survey data on media usage and media trust in 2016 for 13 selected countries to apply a regression analysis to examine how strongly media use affects trust in the media. In a second step we analyzed the effects from trust/ distrust for important parameters of the media industry (e.g willingness to pay, advertising acceptance). It is shown that news consumption generally promotes trust in the media systems. Further it became clearly apparent that consumption of public broadcasting as well as of conventional quality services such as the subscription press significantly strengthens trust in the media system. Therefore, it must be a key concern of the industry to strengthen trust in the media, because intact media trust promotes not only a willingness to pay for news but also the acceptance of advertising.