Informing Europe How news media shape political trust in the European Union

Over the past decade, the European Union (EU) has faced a range of crises and challenges, which have undermined political trust in the EU and its institutions. Changes in political trust reflect evaluations of and support for political institutions and can therefore be an indicator for an institutions’ democratic legitimacy. This dissertation studies how media coverage of the EU, immigration, and the economy, as well as cues from national politics inform the public’s trust in the EU, using a combination of manual and automated content analysis, survey data, and experiments. Even though effects are limited in size and depend on characteristics of both the content and the recipient, the results show that media coverage of the EU, immigration, and the economy, as well as cues from national politics can affect the formation or dissolution of political trust in the EU. Thus, information provided to citizens through the news media matters for public opinion about the EU.