Distorted accountability: Social media use, disinformation, and the erosion of political trustworthiness

This article investigates how social media use and elite-driven disinformation impact citizens’ ability to make rational judgments about political trustworthiness. Drawing on data from three Eurobarometer waves (2021–2023) across all 27 EU member states and paired with macro-level governance indicators, we distinguish between political trust and trustworthiness, the latter conceptualized as alignment between public trust and objective institutional performance. We categorize respondents into four trust types of judgments on political trust: skeptical trust, skeptical mistrust, credulous trust, and cynical mistrust. Subsequently, we examine how traditional media and social media use influences these judgments. Results show that frequent social media use is associated with higher probability of irrational judgments. This association appears stronger in environments where political elites use social media to disseminate disinformation or hate speech. These findings challenge the optimistic assumptions of the “virtuous circle” thesis in the digital context and highlight the polarizing influence of algorithm-driven and elite-manipulated online environments.