In Truth we Trust? Information Disorder as a Function of Declining Trust in Media and Democracy

With climate change, armed interstate conflict, and the ever-present threat of the next pandemic just lurking around the corner, the inclined reader already suspects: Picking that one challenge to rule them all, that cherry on our polycrisis-flavoured cake, is anything but an easy task. Yet, luckily, the World Economic Forum (WEF) rose to the occasion. Drawing from the wisdom of the expert crowds, the WEF’s Global Risks Report identified mis- and disinformation once more as the most pressing short-term risk of our times (2025). And this does not come as a surprise. Information disorder is often portrayed as the root cause for various public woes ranging from climate denialism to political polarization. This perspective on misinformation as “a societal disease” (Williams, 2023) argues that individuals are simply sucked into a vortex of lies and conspiracies to finally re-emerge as supporters of radical ideologies. It suggests that any remedy to the infodemic is also a remedy to its second-order manifestations. That, if we just fact-check hard enough and teach people how to spot the lies, misinformation could be cured eventually. And that if we can prevent people from falling prey to these ugly falsehoods, issues like the rise of radical right-wing parties, vaccine hesitancy or democratic backsliding would diminish, too (Altay, 2025; Williams, 2023). This perspective, of course, does not fully hold up under scrutiny. 

When motivated, individuals actually do quite well at detecting false news (Pfänder & Altay, 2025). The public is remarkably sceptical towards dubious sources (Pennycook & Rand, 2019). Consequently, the problem does not lie solely in our inability to recognize unreliable news. Instead, it might be time to treat misinformation as the symptom of a deeper, underlying malaise. The diagnosis, you ask? Kicking off this year's edition of the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy in Vienna’s Diplomatic Academy, Ambassador Emil Brix may have offered a key piece to this puzzle: “Diplomats do not talk about truth. Diplomats talk about trust.”  So, let’s follow their lead. 

Trusting the Media

Journalism’s role in a democracy is not just to hold those in power accountable. It also involves establishing the foundation of shared truths necessary for any meaningful democratic discourse (Reimer et al., 2025). Yet, this “agreed backbone of facts upon which to base constructive deliberation” (Davie, 2025) is increasingly under strain with legacy media outlets losing both their public appeal and the faith of their audiences. The reasons for this are manifold. They range from (domestic) populist and foreign attacks on the credibility of the press to economic constraints threatening the quality of the reporting, from platforms incentivizing sensationalism to journalists actively engaging in de-democratizing practices (Egelhofer et al., 2022; Ferreira, 2024; Newman et al., 2024; Wilner et al., 2022). Ironically, this list also extends to measures explicitly designed to curb the spread of misinformation. Interactive inoculation tools such as the popular Bad News game, for example, do foster scepticism towards misinformation. However, that effect appears to be accompanied by an unintended reduction of trust towards authentic news following the intervention (Modirrousta-Galian & Higham, 2023). This leads us back to our initial observation on the public’s distrust towards unreliable sources (Pennycook & Rand, 2019; Pfänder & Altay, 2025): When trust in such dubious sites is already at rock bottom, intervention aiming at fostering more criticality suffer from floor effects and harm reliable news instead (Altay, 2025).

In his recent address on the future of the BBC, the Director General of the world's oldest public broadcaster Tim Davie referred to this current state of the media as a "trust crisis." A label more accurate than many would like to admit: Based on a recent Gallup (2024) opinion poll, US citizens’ trust in the media has deteriorated steadily since the early 70s. Following a total trend reversal, somebody reporting at least a moderate amount of trust in the media today (31%) is about as uncommon as somebody expressing little to no trust in 1972 (30%). And even though there are partisan differences, this general downward trend remains robust across party lines.  While not as extreme, a similar pattern can be observed for the OECD member countries with more individuals indicating low to no trust (44%) compared to high or moderate trust (39%, 2024). This is highly problematic, as nations with higher levels of media trust are more resilient towards information disorder (Humprecht et al., 2020). The decline of trust, on the other side, undermines the media’s ability to establish epistemic knowledge. It can no longer provide sufficient orientation to the public, leaving its audiences “yearning for alternative facts” (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020, p. 231). Rather than being pulled towards misinformation, sceptic citizens avoid established media. They are being pushed away from reliable sources and towards alternative information spheres in the fringes (Tsfati & Peri, 2006). The result is a highly fragmented media environment dissenting from established narratives and offering counter-cultural discourse that challenges both democratic values and the norms of public debate (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020). An environment in which individuals disengaged with traditional networks are most likely to be exposed to thriving misinformation (Humprecht, 2023).

Trusting Politics & Democracy

People’s stance on the media appears to be directly related to their faith in the government (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020). In OECD countries, those who trust the media are twice as likely to also express trust in their government. Given the decline of the former, it is therefore unsurprising that trust in public institutions has been eroding, too (OECD, 2024). What is surprising, however, is that this phenomenon does not universally apply to all of them: While trust in representative institutions (e.g., parliament) has been waning globally for several decades now, trust in implementing institutions (e.g., police) has remained stable (Valgarðsson et al., 2025). Put differently, what is in question is not the state itself, but rather the legitimacy of its democratically elected representatives (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Valgarðsson et al., 2025). The exact causes for this drop are difficult to pinpoint. Yet, one – fiercely debated – explanation proposes a causal link between political trust and the perceived performance of governmental institutions: The more satisfied citizens are with how their representatives are doing, the more they trust them (Mauk, 2021; Newton & Norris, 2000). The more they believe that the institutions are not actually working for them, the more distrustful they become (Zuckerman, 2017). This could be highly concerning, given that satisfaction with democracies across the globe is at an all-time low (Eurofound, 2025; Foa et al., 2020; Pew Research Center, 2024). Potentially seen as preventable policy failures, events like the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Eurozone crisis in the following year or the European refugee crisis in 2015 resulted in lasting drops in satisfaction. Consequently, the decline of trust in representative institutions may be attributed to citizens’ perception of policymakers failing to address pressing issues (Foa et al., 2020). 

This lack of trust in democratic institutions creates the perfect breeding ground for misinformation: In line with motivated reasoning, citizens already sceptical of their democratic institutions are more susceptible to it. More than just turning towards unreliable news for orientation, they are longing to confirm their anti-establishment views (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020). Instead of falling for lies, they jump for them (Altay, 2025). They actively seek misinformation to rationalize prior beliefs, to reinforce pre-existing misperceptions and to justify partisan identities (Altay, 2025; Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Humprecht, 2023). 

Conclusion

While there is soft evidence pointing towards a one-directional causal relationship linking trust in both media and democratic institutions with susceptibility to disinformation (Zimmermann & Kohring, 2020), failure to acknowledge potential feedback-loops between these concepts would be dishonest. Like for any challenge worth its salt, misinformation is a complex, multicausal issue. Just as a lack of trust fuels the spread of misinformation, these falsehoods in turn most definitely also erode faith in news organisations and elected officials. An ouroboros of democratic decay.

Yet, framing misinformation as the sole culprit behind a myriad of societal issues misses some deeper nuance: Lies do not thrive in a vacuum but in a climate already poisoned by distrust. When citizens lose trust in the established media outlets, they turn to alternative, mostly unreliable sources and thus are more likely to encounter misinformation. When they lose trust in democratic institutions, on the other hand, they are more willing to accept new information that aligns with their negative sentiment. As such, they become more susceptible to misinformation.

First and foremost, this spells bad news for quick fixes: if the issue lies not in our ability to discern between true and false, then debunking and media literacy trainings only treat symptoms. Of course, this doesn’t mean that these interventions aren’t important! Before we can treat the underlying condition, we need to stabilize the patient. After all, there is little value in diagnosing a trust crisis, when by the time we get to fix it, democracy is already in shambles. (Indeed, this is also the largest limitation of this argument: It assumes not just that those in charge are democratically elected, but also, that they are democratic in nature. Once anti-democratic forces are in power and the media is captured, more trust is the last thing we need.) 

In other words, to truly tackle misinformation, we should consider focusing on reestablishing trust. In interventions, by teaching people who to trust rather than who to distrust (Altay, 2025). In newsrooms, by actively engaging with the audience, being transparent and resisting the temptation of sensationalism (Banerjee et al., 2023). And in politics, by reimagining representative bodies as participatory and accountable spaces that earn trust through solid policies.