Mellan flöde och förtroende. En kvantitativ studie som genom en multipel regressionsanalys undersöker sambandet mellan nyhetskonsumtion via sociala medier och förtroendet för traditionella medier.

Abstract

In this study we investigate the association between news consumption on social media and trust in traditional media. We tested this association through two hypotheses: (H1) Higher news consumption on social media has a negative association with trust in traditional media, and (H2) Younger individuals who consume news on social media have a higher trust in traditional media. To interpret our findings, we applied theoretical frameworks such as the Uses & gratifications theory (Ruggiero, 2000) and the analytical perspective digital natives vs digital immigrants (Jarrahi & Eshraghi, 2019). While Uses & gratifications theory focuses on how users actively seek out and evaluate media based on personal needs and gratifications, the digital natives vs digital immigrants perspective highlights how age-related differences in media habits and familiarity influence perceptions of trust and credibility. The analysis is based on nationally representative survey data from the SOM-institute from the years 1986-2023. Multiple regression analysis was applied on this data to test direct and interaction effects. Age was included as a moderating variable and gender was included as a control variable. One key finding in this study is that no statistically significant correlation was found between general news consumption on social media and trust in traditional media. This means that our first hypothesis was vaguely supported. Another key finding was that a significant interaction was found between age and news consumption: older individuals tended to show higher levels of trust in traditional media when consuming news on social media. Thus, our second hypothesis was not supported which contradicts our assumption that younger users would show higher trust. Our analysis also showed that the r² value was very low, indicating weak explanatory power. One possible explanation for this is the way the variable for social media news consumption was constructed. It measured general news consumption on social media and not specifically the consumption of traditional media content on social media platforms. This represents one of the limitations of the study due to limitations in the available variables in the SOM-data. The findings of this study suggest that trust is influenced not only by how frequently individuals consume news or which platform they use, but also by their media habits and age. The results align with previous research emphasizing the complex and multi-dimensional nature of media trust. This study provides new insights in how age moderates the association between news consumption on social media and trust. It also highlights the importance of considering user characteristics and platform dynamics in media trust research.