The News Media as an Arena of Trust Contestation During the Pandemic

In democracy, mass media play a crucial role in providing the information that citizens need to assess the trustworthiness of government and their political representatives. This chapter focuses on this role by analysing the media as a mediator of knowledge and a catalyst for the formation of public opinion. Particular attention is placed on the ways in which the trustworthiness of government and science is contested by various actors, including journalists and citizens, through the news. Studying political news is a promising endeavour for better understanding the “making of” trust and distrust in democracy. Through news making, we can observe how judgements about trust and distrust, together with the very criteria of trustworthiness that are applied to arrive at such judgements, are given selective salience and are framed in a way that (in)forms public opinion. The chapter is based on a comparative study of trust contestation in the news media and on social media in response to political news in seven European countries during the 2020-22 Covid-19 pandemic. With respect to the newspaper coverage, the findings point to an elite bias in trust contestation through the news that is mainly channelled through governmental actors, experts, and scientists as both trust givers and targets of trust. As the principal arena of trust mediation, the newspapers mainly give voice to established actors, while anti-lockdown or vaccine-critical voices remain marginalised. In comparison, social media provide an arena for non-elite actors and critical voices. Yet, instead of opening a broader debate, this space is predominantly used to express distrust.