Media Trust in a Community Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Individual- and Prefecture-Level Sources of Media Trust in Japan

Prior research has examined various correlates of media trust including media consumers’ political stands and media use, objectivity in news reports, and perceived biases stemming from journalists’ political leanings. The goal of this study is to examine community contextual sources of media trust. Data from the Japanese General Social Surveys indicate that prefecture-level structural pluralism and political heterogeneity are negatively associated with measures of media trust, independent of personal characteristics of respondents. Implications are discussed in terms of the production of media messages.