COVID-19 and political trust: A longitudinal analysis of the effect of social media consumption on political trust and on the relationship between level of education and political trust during the COVID-19 crisis.

Employing multiple mixed multilevel model analyses using survey data from the LISS Panel, direct effects and interaction effects of social media use on ‘political trust’ were tested at various stages before and during the COVID-19 period. Building on the argument by Ceron (2015) of social media generally being negatively associated with political trust, due to its bottom-up nature favouring circulation of ‘alternative information’ compared to news from traditional media (p.488), the expectation was that due to factors like lower political sophistication, frequent social media use leads to even lower political trust for the low-educated, compared to the high educated spending the same amount of time on social media during the pandemic. The mixed model analysis indicated that a significant ‘pandemic effect’ on political trust existed, as well as a positive relationship between level of education and political trust. A significant direct effect of social media use was not found. Finally, an interaction effect of social media use on the relationship between education and political trust was only found within the context of the pandemic period. The absence of a direct social media effect indicates that Ceron’s (2015) argument might not be totally valid. However, future research using a more sophisticated ‘social media’ measure might uncover different results.