You’ve lost that trusting feeling: Diminishing trust in the news media in rural versus urban US communities

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study, we use Social Identity Theory to examine whether political ideology, where people live, and time correlate with trust in news media in the US. Moreover, we examine whether the correlation between ideology and where a person lives with trust in the press varies over time. We also examine a three-way interaction to determine if decreases in trust are concentrated among conservatives living in rural areas in the US. In general, we replicate previous findings showing that ideology is associated with trust in news media. We did not find that where people live is correlated with trust in news media. When adding time to our model, our results found that conservatives show greater increases in distrust in the news media compared to liberals. Similarly, people living in rural parts of the country showed lower levels of trust in the news media over time compared to those living in more urban parts of the country. In the end, our three-way interaction found that conservatives living in rural parts of the country showed the greatest decreases in trust in the news media over the course of time.