The news we choose to trust: Examining long-term mainstream versus non-mainstream news consumption and trust in a liberal-authoritarian media system

Abstract

Monitoring and maintaining news trust in democratic societies is important. Thus, scholars have investigated how the consumption of mainstream and alternative news can influence how the public trusts them in the long term. However, such dichotomy is difficult to apply to the liberal-authoritarian media system in Singapore, where most media outlets are under the government’s purview. To address this, the current study first distinguishes between ‘mainstream’ and ‘non-mainstream’ news media in Singapore. It then leverages the reinforcing spiral model to explore the potential reinforcing relationship between their consumption levels and trust. Growth modelling techniques were performed on a three-wave panel survey data (n = 427). The intra-individual effects revealed a paradox of engagement in mainstream news content, positive media effects of non-mainstream news consumption on their corresponding trust, and negative influence of mainstream news consumption on non-mainstream news trust. The inter-individual effects demonstrated that high levels of mainstream (vs non-mainstream) news trust can dampen the growth of trust in non-mainstream (vs mainstream) news. However, at the same time, a positive association was found between the growth of trust in mainstream and non-mainstream news media. These findings reflect their complementarity and competitive nature in people’s news repertoires.