Explaining Polarized News Media Trust: A Comparison of Italian Adults and Young Adults

Concerns about an alleged crisis of trust in news media have motivated numerous scholars to measure as well as explain it. Considerable attention has especially been paid to identifying the determinants of news media trust, among which individual political leaning plays a major role. Less investigated, however, is the political proximity of news outlets and the audiences—that is, the extent to which their political leanings overlap—and its relationship with news media trust. In our study, to quantitatively elucidate that dynamic, we apply the concept of polarized news media trust, the phenomenon whereby audiences place more trust in politically closer news outlets. Using a survey, we investigate levels and correlates of polarized news media trust among Italian adults and young adults. Among the results, adults display higher levels of polarized news media trust than young adults do, and unlike with adults, most political variables are not significantly associated with polarized news media trust among young adults. The results also show the polarizing effect of traditional journalism on social media for both young adults and adults.