Informed and Confident: The effect of the consumption of traditional and digital media on the confidence of Chileans in 2015

Abstract

People’s trust, interpersonal or institutional, helps explain different social phenomena and social interactions. This is achieved because interactions between individuals require some degree of confidence. In turn, literature shows the effect of media consumption on the attitudes of individuals. However, the relationship between media consumption and the generation of trust in people has different interpretations. In other way, there is an understanding that traditional media consumption positively influences the generation of trust. On the other hand, other says the relationship is negative. Likewise, the effect of digital media with the confidence of individuals has not been clearly established. Using the survey of the United Nations Development Program - Human Development Index 2015 (UNDP-HDI 2015), I value how much the consumption of traditional and digital media influences the trust, interpersonal and institutional, of the Chileans in 2015. I conclude that consuming different types of media also increases different types of trust. Where, traditional media consumption positively influences trust in institutions, and on the other hand, the consumption of digital media influences the interpersonal trust of Chileans in 2015.