Grisel Salazar Rebolledo

Political polarization is bad news for media trust: evidence from Latin America

According to different global indexes, public trust in the press has been declining worldwide in the last decade. This is a preoccupying trend, because trust is usually considered as a reliable measurement for media success and a key factor in democracy building. However, the decline in media trust sharply varies across countries and regions. Although recent research has shed light on several explaining factors behind changes in media trust, to date there is little research on how these dynamics operate in the global south, where media systems differ considerably from those in western democracies.

This paper investigates the factors that influence the press trust in Latin America. Particularly, the aim of this research is to answer why have some Latin-American countries witnessed a more dramatic decline in press trust than others. Using an original database for the region between 2000-2020 and a quantitative methodology, findings indicate that political factors, such as polarization, negatively affect the public trust on media. Also, the empirical results demonstrate that higher levels of democracy promote more public trust in media, even under a polarized environment.

Keywords:Press, media trust, political polarization.