In Media We Trust: Journalists and institutional trust perceptions in post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian countries
Abstract
Trust is a societal value that is difficult to gain and easy to lose. The issue of trust is significant in both post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian countries since citizens' trust in institutions and in each other represents the values most undermined by any repressive regime.This article deals with the levels of trust that journalists working in eight post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian countries (Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Latvia, South Africa and Tanzania) have in various social institutions using data from the present Worlds of Journalism Study.
All eight countries experienced political, societal and economic changes accompanied by democratization efforts. Civil society and new elites emerged, followed by institutional struggles for political authority and establishment of media monopolies in the hands of government allies.
The argument of the paper is that these factors may have influenced the level of trust journalists have in various social institutions. In each country, results showed the level of trust in journalists' own institution-the media-is higher than the level of trust in both political and regulative institutions.
The expression of low trust, particularly in regulative institutions, in the sampled countries represents significantly different results from previous studies about journalists' trust in countries with longer democratic traditions. One of the challenges of conducting research of this magnitude, and a possible limitation of this study, stems from comparing culturally diverse and distant countries, even though the same methodology is applied.
Nonetheless, for this research the challenges were reliably addressed. A number of previous studies examined the trust of various societal institutions and the audience in media and journalism.
This article contributes to the understudied but critically important research topic concerning journalists' perceptions of trust in societal institutions. It also enriches the existing rare cross-continent comparative studies on journalism in post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian societies.