Can we trust measures of trust? Measurement invariance in trust in EU news media

Abstract

Trust in the news media received wide scholarly attention for almost a century, which was further boosted as a result of recent developments in the media landscape and changes in how news is made and consumed. Despite that, the conceptualization of trust in the news media is still debated, and its measurement comparability has not yet been established. In this paper, I build up on earlier conceptualizations of trust in the news media, and test three theoretically derived measurement models to determine their cross-cultural equivalence in 28 EU countries. Using Eurobarometer data, I test the validity and comparability of these measurements employing multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. The findings indicate that trust is a unidimensional latent construct, equally interpreted across contexts. People's level of trust in the news media reflects their general attitude to the news stories and reporters in all sources of media they are exposed to. While bifactorial measurements of news media trust, differentiating between legacy and online sources, have some merit in single case-studies, they are non-invariant and therefore non comparable. This means that any cross-population differences found employing them are likely a function of measurement idiosyncrasies or other unknown factors.