This study analyses mistrust of media. Door-to-door interviews were conducted with 318 respondents in six different parts of Sweden. In 2015 the Swedish research institute SOM published an interesting study of mistrust of media in Sweden, showing that the group that mistrust the media is dominated by supporters of the Sweden Democrats. The aim of this study is to gain understanding of the causes and nature of mistrust of media. The interviews featured both open and closed questions, covering political interest and the respondents opinions about what is good and less good in society. This essay primarily analyses the issues that concern trust in the media linked to community involvement. This essay is based on the framework of a larger study by the think tank Arena Idé. The interviews were conducted by 10 interviewers and the coding of the material was done by a person employed by the think tank. For the interview guide, a code scheme was created and the computer programme Nvivo was used for the coding. Employing theories about public connection and the hostile media effect, this study aims to provide a better understanding of popular mistrust. The findings point to the conclusion that there are reasons to believe that a hostile media effect exists. The expressions of mistrust of media are classified into three different themes: Source criticism, Alleged obfuscation of truth, and Angling of media. The connection to society in the group with a low level of trust in the media is found to be narrow but intense.

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.

This thesis set out to examine news habits among Swedish 15-20 year olds during the spring of 2020 but then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Following the events and its possible implications on news consumption, the focus shifted towards also looking at how young people’s news habits might change during the pandemic. This study was primarily aimed at better understanding the relationship between young people and news by implementing theories relating to their motivations and how they connect to society. The method used to examine this was online surveys. Additionally, by building on research from the 2009 Swine flu pandemic the survey aimed at improving the understanding of news’ relevance in the context of the digitized media landscape and evolved use of social media. From the results it seems respondents had a bigger need for news and information during Covid-19. Results showed that young people have an interest in news and care about what goes on in society. Factors such as political interest and education level indicated higher news consumption but not as much in relation to the pandemic. Social media was important for the overall news consumption. Those discussing current events with friends and family were also more likely to consume news to a greater extent than those who did not. This study concludes that the decline in youth news consumption previously observed, might not be as severe and that the role of social media is a crucial element. It is also evident that the Covid-19 pandemic increased young people’s news consumption and they turn to the news for information and to better understand what goes on in the world around them.