The Decline of Political Trust The Effects of News Media Exposure, Party Identification and Executive and Legislative Approval Ratings

BSC-Ursa Minor 19

Political trust in the United States is declining and without political trust, the government cannot effectively do its job. Concurrently, media consumption has been on the rise, especially with the introduction of the internet and the vast amount of unfiltered information readily available to most U.S. citizens. Relying on the 2012 American National Election Study survey, this paper will explore the effect of different media types on political trust. A high level of political trust is essential for government efficiency and active citizen political participation and without some sort of change, it is unlikely that political trust levels will begin to rise. As technology use continues to increase and develop, media will likely become even more readily available to U.S. citizens furthering the effect that it has on U.S. society and politics. Previous research on this subject has produced a positive correlation between newspaper news attention and political trust and a negative correlation between television news consumption and political trust. Among the interesting results, I found that attention to varying types of media had no significant correlation with political trust. This finding challenges previous work on this subject and poses the idea that media no longer has a significant effect on feelings of trust towards the government. This paper discusses alternative factors that could be contributing to the decline of political trust in the United States and stresses the importance of understanding why political trust is in a continual downward spiral.