Information Environment, Media Use, and Political Trust

This paper aims to implement a comprehensive analysis of the information environment in the societies across the EU to assess the openness of information flows (monitored by proxy measures of freedom of expression) which serves an important mediator of political trustworthiness assessment and hence trust-building. Societies with one-sided information flows (in closed information societies) display greater trust in political authorities than those living in contexts with two-sided information flows. The free press is commonly regarded as an essential condition for an enlightened public. Thus, more informed decisions about trustworthy political leaders, political parties, civil service officials, and state authorities are likely to be maximized in open societies with freedom of expression, media pluralism, and accountability mechanisms, all closely associated with the type of democratic or autocratic regime governing each state, combined with levels of human development, expanding literacy, schooling, and media access in each society. Some of the most troubling indications of democratic backsliding in recent decades concern increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and civil liberties, including through state censorship of the independent media, unofficial government harassment of critical journalists, and expanded libel or defamation laws, illustrated in cases such as Hungary, Turkey, and Poland. This paper uses secondary population (EVS/ WVS, ESS, EB) and expert (Freedom House, V-Dem) survey data to provide a comparative cross-country overview of media use patterns and information environments in European and selected world countries to examine the causal links between the media and information environment, on our side, and the types of trust widespread in the society, including rational sceptical vs credulous trust and cynical mistrust.