The crisis of trust in media often has been attributed to the development of the Internet. This article aimed to empirically examine the role of the Internet in eroding or strengthening trust in media. Taking an ecological perspective, this article studied how Internet development is shaping the informational context in which media trust is created. The data from the World Values Survey were adopted with 61,975 respondents in 46 countries. Multilevel analyses reported a couple of results. First, trust in media is increased in the Internet context, but is undermined by the individual use of the Internet. Second, the Internet creates a disembedding context in which the cultural approach to media trust is weakened, and the institutional approach is strengthened.

Abstract

Although studies acknowledge that the level of digitalization in the media domain plays an important role for Internet use, conceptual and operational ambiguities remain as to whether digitalization speaks to an infrastructural attribute of societies and countries or instead refers to digitized media preferences and use of individuals. Using survey data from Europe, China, and the United States, this study examines both micro (individual) and macro (infrastructural) levels of digitalization and their interaction effects on use of the Internet. Through multilevel regression modeling, this study reveals that individual-level digitalization negatively relates to Internet news consumption, but positively relates to use of the Internet for other purposes. In addition, it shows that infrastructural-level digitalization only positively and significantly affects the use of the Internet for news consumption and for work-related purposes. The study further reveals cross-level interactions of digitalization on Internet use.