Political freedom, news consumption, and patterns of political trust: evidence from East and Southeast Asia, 2001-2016

Jiang, Anli; Zhang, Tony Huiquan

doi:10.1080/00323187.2021.1968767

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Religion is usually considered a conservative social force associated with authoritarian values (Inglehart & Baker, 2000;Lakatos, 2015;Lipset, 1959). Scholars have found that people with religious beliefs, especially those who are committed to their beliefs, usually have higher trust in their governments (Jiang & Zhang, 2021a) and are less likely to express discontentment with the authorities (Flanagan & Lee, 2003). Based on the preceding discussion, we formulate our first research hypothesis as: H1.…”

Section: Determinants Of Political Trust and Religious Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, literature focusing on political trust in Asia has noticed a complex pattern ‐ paradoxical trust (Li, 2004), which demonstrated that people have different levels of trust in different levels of government. For instance, according to scholars' observations in China, low political trust, or political distrust, is limited to local government; while people's confidence in regimes, institutions, establishments, and trust in central governments and top politicians remains high (Jiang & Zhang, 2021a; Li, 2004; Shi, 2001). Therefore, this low trust condition does not hurt the quality of governance.…”

Section: Determinants Of Political Trust and Religious Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the Inglehartian thesis is widely recognized as powerful in explaining the political cultural changes (Norris, 1999(Norris, , 2000, there are equally influential alternatives in the field of public opinion research. The competing explanations include the government performance (Van der Meer & Hakhverdian, 2017), social inequality (Andersen et al, 2021), cultural traditions (Cao et al, 2015;Shi, 2001), and political systems (Jiang & Zhang, 2021a, 2021bLai et al, 2010) in shaping political trust and orientations. For instance, an influential line of research focusing on political trust in China demonstrated that economic development and government performance were moderating factors that largely offset the decline of political trust resulting from the expansion of education and the increase in informed citizenry (Ma & Wang, 2014;Wang, 2005b).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Urbanization, education, and religion: Rationalization and erosion of political trust in Asia

Zhang,

Jiang

2023

Sociology Compass

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Secularization, expansion of higher education, and urbanization have led to disenchantment with politics and the erosion of political trust in many societies. Religion may continue to be salient, however, how these forces interact with enduring religious influences to shape political trust is unclear. This paper examines the issue using Asian Barometer Survey (2001–2016) data with hierarchical age–period–cohort (HAPC) models. Our results show supportive evidence for the following findings: in East and Southeast Asia, urbanization is associated with less political trust for most religions except Islam; education is associated with less political trust; education's effect is the most salient for the atheists and Buddhists, but it disappears among the Muslims. The findings suggest the power of modernization and secularization significantly differs across cultures and religions. We should not simply perceive religion as a universally conservative force; instead, we need to understand religions through an integrated macro‐micro perspective by situating it in the social contexts.

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Section: Determinants Of Political Trust and Religious Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Determinants Of Political Trust and Religious Influencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Urbanization, education, and religion: Rationalization and erosion of political trust in Asia

Zhang,

Jiang

2023

Sociology Compass

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“…The benign-cycle theory suggests that the public's media use can have positive effects on political attitudes, such as increasing political interest, knowledge, and participation, as well as fostering political trust [34][35][36][37]. However, research indicates that the relationship between media use and political trust is complex and dependent on various factors, including the type and content of media consumed, the level of media use and trust, and the underlying motivation for media consumption [24,38,39]. Additionally, the impact of media use on political trust is subject to change depending on the broader media landscape and context [40,41].…”

Section: Unofficial Media Use and Political Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using unofficial media, less trusting of Chinese polity?—An analysis based on the moderated mediation effect

Yan-ping

2023

PLoS ONE

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Enhancing political trust is an important manifestation of China’s ability to modernisation national governance in the media age. In the context where unofficial media has a crowding-out effect on official media, building political trust effectively becomes an important foundation for promoting the construction of a national governance system. This study employs the 2015 survey data on social consciousness of netizens and constructs a moderated mediation model using the bootstrap method, with subjective well-being as the intermediary variable and official media use as the moderating variable, to empirically explore the influence of unofficial media use on political trust and its underlying mechanism. The results reveal that unofficial media use significantly and steadily deconstructing political trust. In terms of the mechanism of transmission, subjective well-being is an important channel used by unofficial media use to deconstruct political trust, official media has a positive moderating role in the impact pathway of subjective well-being on political trust. Further research finds that unofficial media use has a stronger impact on trust in the central government, court, and police, compared to trust in township governments. Weibo or online communities and overseas media can deconstruct political trust, however, gossip or chatting with friends can construct political trust. In general, this study provides theoretical basis and empirical experience for how to enhance government trust and ultimately promote the construction of national governance system, given the increasing influence of unofficial media. Meanwhile, the research results also provide some reference value for countries with similar backgrounds to China.

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“…Even though the two theoretical views suggest different media effects on political trust, they could be both correct depending on the context. Some scholars even propose a third thesis, stating that the effect of media usage on political trust should depend on specific contexts including media types, media content, motivation of media usage, degree of media usage and levels of trust in media, and the like (Jiang & Zhang, 2021; Kang & Zhu, 2021; Meng & Li, 2021; Niu, 2010). When the specific contexts change, the relationship between media usage and political trust could also change (Brosius, van Elsas & de Vreese, 2019; Echeverria & Mani, 2020; Guggenheim, Kwak & Campbell, 2011; Kim, Chen & De Zúñiga, 2013; Otto & Maier, 2016; Von Sikorski & Herbst, 2020; Tsfati, Tukachinsky, & Peri, 2009).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the effects of traditional media, social media, and foreign media on hierarchical levels of political trust in China

Zhang

2022

Global Media and China

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Although there is a consensus that mass media play an important role in the rise and fall of political trust in Western democracies, existing research on media use and political trust in China achieved relatively inconclusive findings. By using two surveys conducted in China in 2013 and 2018, we examine the effects of media use, including traditional media, social media, and foreign media, on Chinese citizens’ trust in their central and local governments. Our research shows that traditional media usage such as watching TV and reading newspapers is positively associated with citizens’ trust in the central government but is not related to their trust in local governments. Social media usage is negatively associated with trust in local governments but not with trust in the central government. Using VPNs to access foreign media is negatively associated with Chinese citizens’ trust in the central government but does not affect their trust in local governments. We explain why different types of media have such contrasting effects on political trust in central versus local Chinese governments and discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of these findings.

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Political freedom, news consumption, and patterns of political trust: evidence from East and Southeast Asia, 2001-2016

Cited by 9 publications

References 48 publications

Urbanization, education, and religion: Rationalization and erosion of political trust in Asia

Urbanization, education, and religion: Rationalization and erosion of political trust in Asia

Using unofficial media, less trusting of Chinese polity?—An analysis based on the moderated mediation effect

Exploring the effects of traditional media, social media, and foreign media on hierarchical levels of political trust in China

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