An extensive strand of literature demonstrates that citizen evaluations of political institutions that serve as the foundation for political trust judgments are frequently formed based on mediated political information obtained from news media channels. Despite the richness of the literature, two conceptual limitations persist. First, many studies operationalize media influence as a direct relationship between exposure to specific media sources and trust. Second, political trust itself is often operationalized as a unidimensional outcome – an aggregated index of confidence in political institutions. The present study addresses these gaps by proposing an integrated, two-stage heuristic model of media influence on political trust. On the predictors side, the paper distinguishes between media consumption patterns that capture structural conditions under which political information reaches the users, and media-related attitudes that determine how incoming information is evaluated and processed. On the outcome side, the analysis moves focus from the influence of media on political trust level to the normative interpretation and foundations that underly the political trust judgement where a distinction is made between skeptical, cynical and compliant trust types. The findings show that media predictors operate differently across these two outcomes. Trust in media and perceived media impartiality are consistent positive predictors of the aggregated political trust index, suggesting that confidence in the information environment is closely linked to institutional confidence. However, the trust-type models reveal a more ambivalent pattern. Traditional media use and positive media evaluations reduce cynical mistrust but mainly strengthen compliant rather than skeptical trust. By contrast, sustained exposure to political news increases the likelihood of skeptical trust, whereas reliance on multiple information sources strengthens cynical mistrust and weakens both skeptical and compliant trust. Skeptical trust therefore does not appear to emerge from a general spillover of social trust or from confidence in media as a heuristic shortcut. Rather, it is more closely associated with cognitive resources and sustained political information exposure. The findings suggest that media do not only affect how much citizens trust political institutions, but also whether such trust reflects a skeptical, compliant, or cynical judgement.
Kseniya Kizilova (Mon,) studied this question.