Seventh International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The novelty of this research is highlighting the news trust at different levels of analysis in the Egyptian context. This study holds a new perspective in presenting a developed conceptual model that integrates new trust at different levels of analysis (news type, brand, content, and journalists assessment), a proposed framework (2020), and adopts a four-factor model (2019) into one model that tested the news trust in general. This study provides a focused review of three objectives (a) the relationship between the propensity to trust and the news trust at different levels (b) testing the correlations between the news trust at different levels, (c), the relationship between the news trust at different levels and the civic engagement. This study adopts the subjective quality assessment and media dependency theory. A mixed-method approach was applied. In-depth interviews with 7 professionals and 10 audiences were carried out. Findings show that news trust is established when the audience has a level of awareness. Then, an online survey was conducted, 441 responses were collected. Results illustrated a significant relationship between the audiences’ propensity to trust and news trust at different levels. The findings also highlighted that the most trustworthy is the Western news and then national news. While national news was selected from most participants, most of them had a low level of education. Overall, the work contributes to the developing area of news trust research and adds to the limited research with a significantly developed model that can be replicated to measure the news trust.