Mainstream News Media Trust, Countermedia Attendance, and Political Learning

Using a two-wave panel dataset, this study sought to better understand the relationship between mainstream news media trust, countermedia attendance, and political knowledge. The results of a lagged autoregressive path model indicated that mainstream news media trust was negatively associated with countermedia attendance and that countermedia attendance was negatively associated with political learning. An additional model suggested that frequent attendance to countermedia sources is also supportive of diminished levels of trust in the mainstream news media.