Living in the Trust Nexus: Investigating the Interplay of News and Government Trust on Individuals' Subjective Well‐Being in Singapore

ABSTRACT Citizens' trust in the news and the government can affect the success of governments' strategic intervention in the news media to advance their positions. To sustain healthy trust levels in both sources, it is important to ensure that they can enhance their subjective well‐being. Through a survey, this study puts forth a trust‐nexus framework examining how the interplay of government and media trust impacts well‐being in a liberal‐authoritarian media system. The marginal effects of news trust on audiences' emotional and social well‐being are greater at high levels of government trust than at low levels. This interaction effect impacting psychological well‐being is more pronounced when there is high than low social media news consumption. The study interprets, via a critical media sociology perspective, how the building of the different dimensions of news audiences' subjective well‐being via news trust can be conditioned by government trust and social media news consumption.