The not so easy relationship between media use, media trust and political trust

A recent German study attested to young people a low trust in media and political institutions. More than 70% of the participating youth do not trust newspapers or journalists (Bepanthen Vertrauensstudie 2022). Whereas skepticism regarding published news can be considered democratically healthy in light of fake news on online social media platforms, this high number of media mistrust is alarming. Representative democratic systems are more than ever media democracies; media stimulate and shape public discourse and serve as public watchdogs for politics. They, therefore, play a crucial role in political communication processes. On the other hand, political communication on social media platforms can present the downside of critical and trustworthy political discourse: digital literacy approaches emphasize critical assessment of news sources and encourage users to double-check sources and test credibility. They raise awareness of false information and the liability of online political communication. This approach might be one factor for the above-described growing general mistrust towards media and journalists. In this paper, we want to explore the relationship between media use, media trust, and political trust and analyse if and how media use is related to media and political trust. We will use a non-representative online sample of youth from 2021.