This quantitative study investigates the public perception of media reporting on disinformation campaigns targeted at Sweden. Through a structured questionnaire survey administered to participants aged 18-65, the study examines the level of awareness regarding recent disinformation campaigns towards the nation, the primary sources of news consumption, and the perceived adequacy of media coverage regarding the campaigns. The collected data from 141 respondents, are analyzed based on demographic variables such as age, gender, and level of education. The findings reveal variations in awareness levels across different age groups and gender identities, with younger age groups demonstrating higher awareness levels compared to older participants in the survey. The study also examines the perceived trustworthiness of news sources, including whether news reporting on the disinformation campaigns is considered more credible when it comes from traditional media compared to social media. The results from the survey are discussed in relation to the study's theoretical framework with foundations in media science and social psychology. This study contributes to the understanding of how individuals perceive media reporting on contemporary disinformation campaigns towards Sweden.

In this thesis, news media use and trust among Swedish upper secondary schools students of Generation Z is investigated through focus group interviews with students from two different schools. This study aims to explain how and why Swedish upper secondary school students of Generation Z use and perceive news media, with focus on the relations between news media trust and news media use. To interpret the empirical data, the study uses a theoretical framework consisting of three pillars: an understanding of trust informed by Giddens (1990) definition; the use of public connection (Couldry et al., 2018) to understand the role of news media; a generational understanding based on Prensky’s (2001a; 2001b) concept of Digital Natives, and Bolin’s (2017) media generations. This study suggests that there is a clear discrepancy between the young Swedes news media use, and their trust. They acknowledge the importance of news media in society, and traditional news medias are perceived as trustworthy expert systems, providing of professional, quality journalism. Despite the high levels of trust, traditional news medias are rarely actively used. Instead, students come into contact with most news through social media feeds, on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. They mostly view the content on these platforms as unreliable and untrustworthy, due to the lack of a clear, trustworthy expert presence. Despite distrusting the content on social media, the students continue to use the services as a source of news, in part due to the convenience of use and in part as they believe themselves to well equipped to discern true and fake news through their generations’ intimate knowledge of both the structure of social medias, and strategies for fact checking. This study also argues that the use of distrusted news from social media, may in fact in some cases enable a public connection.