Conceptualisations and analyses of distrust and mistrust in news media: Reviewing research from a decade of distrust
Peter Jakobsson
Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala UniversitySweden
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and Fredrik Stiernstedt
School of Culture and Education, Södertörn UniversitySweden
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May 07, 2025
About this article
Published Online: May 07, 2025
Page range: 1 - 27
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2025-0006
Keywords
© 2025 Peter Jakobsson et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Figure 1
Journals and number of articles included in the survey
| Communication Research | Communication studies | 11 |
| Communication Theory | Communication studies | 8 |
| Cultural Studies | Cultural studies | 5 |
| Differences | Cultural studies | 0 |
| Digital Journalism | Journalism studies | 16 |
| European Journal of Communication | Media studies | 12 |
| Feminist Media Studies | Media studies | 7 |
| Information, Communication & Society | Media and communication studies | 27 |
| International Journal of Cultural Studies | Cultural studies | 1 |
| Journal of Cinema and Media Studies | Media and cultural studies | 0 |
| Journal of Communication | Communication studies | 14 |
| Journalism | Journalism studies | 24 |
| Journalism Studies | Journalism studies | 15 |
| Media History | Media studies | 0 |
| Media Psychology | Media studies | 2 |
| Media, Culture & Society | Media studies | 4 |
| New Media & Society | Media studies | 17 |
| Political Communication | Media studies | 17 |
Number of studies per country
| Australia | 2 |
| Austria | 2 |
| Belgium | 3 |
| Brazil | 1 |
| Canada | 1 |
| China | 1 |
| Czech Republic | 1 |
| Finland | 1 |
| Germany | 8 |
| Iceland | 1 |
| India | 1 |
| Israel | 2 |
| Italy | 1 |
| Japan | 2 |
| Jordan | 1 |
| Lebanon | 1 |
| Netherlands | 3 |
| Norway | 4 |
| Russia | 2 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1 |
| South Korea | 5 |
| Spain | 1 |
| Sweden | 4 |
| Switzerland | 1 |
| Ukraine | 1 |
| UK | 4 |
| US | 40 |
j_nor-2025-0006_tab_003
| RQ1. | Which countries, regions, and periods have been studied most extensively regarding questions about distrust in the media? |
| RQ2. | How has distrust in the media been conceptualised and studied? How has it been related to, for example, trust, scepticism, and cynicism? |
| RQ3. | How has distrust in the media been explained in the reviewed research? |
| RQ4. | What are the consequences of distrust in the media according to the reviewed research? |