ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media Governance and the Public Sphere
Enhancing Political Trust through Media Diversity in Post-Pandemic China: Policy Insights for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals
Provisionally accepted
- 1State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication, Communication University of China, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 2School of Cultural Industries Management, Communication University of China, Beijing, China
- 3Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
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Political trust is essential for achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially in the context of new media's impact during health crises. However, how political trust is influenced by media diversity still need further exploration, especially in the post-pandemic era. Based on the Structural Equation Modeling, this study first investigates how the Diversity of Information (DI) affects Political Trust (PT) through Need for Cognition (NFC), Information Freedom Perception (IFP), and Media Trust (MT). Using cluster analysis, we examine the depiction of residents and the consistency and differences of the influence factors among the resident groups. Our findings reveal that residents value diversity of information sources in DI, complexity in NFC, freedom of information selection in IFP, trust for we-media in MT, and institutional trust in PT. DI significantly influences PT and positively affects IFP and NFC. NFC, in turn, significantly impacts IFP, MT, and PT. Additionally, IFP significantly influences MT, and MT significantly influences PT. Cluster analysis identified three demographic groups: "Informed and Trusting," "Isolated but Trusting," and "Partially Informed and Skeptical." Results indicate that the "Partially Informed and Skeptical" group perceives greater DI and less IFP compared to the "Isolated but Trusting" group. These findings underscore the critical role of media diversity in shaping residents' trust in political and media institutions, particularly during crises. This study provides a long-term perspective on political trust in the post-pandemic era, which contributes to the SDGs by highlighting strategies to foster political trust through diverse and credible media environments, essential for sustainable governance.
Keywords: Political trust, Diversity of information, Public Health, COVID-19, SustainableDevelopment goals
Received: 15 Nov 2024; Accepted: 14 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wei, Fu, Xiong and Fu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hongpeng Fu, fuhp@pku.edu.cn
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