Conspiracy Theories and Institutional Trust: Examining the Role of Uncertainty Avoidance and Active Social Media Use

A generalized climate of distrust in political institutions is not functional to healthy democracies. With the advent social media, recent scholarly efforts attempt better understand people's conspiracy theory beliefs inhibiting institutional trust. This study contributes this literature by considering direct antecedent effects uncertainty avoidance and moderating role active media use—SMU (i.e., interactional SMU, informational expressive SMU). The former theorized enable theories thrive, while latter should cushion negative on Relying diverse survey data across different cultures from Europe, Americas, New Zealand (N = 11,958) applying structural equation modeling, findings supported hypothesized model. In high uncertainty-avoidance societies, where less well-known situations are perceived as uncomfortable or downright threatening, proliferate negatively impact Active SMU attenuates these effects. Via citizens have ability strengthen relationships (interactional SMU), keep themselves informed about community (informational engage self-expression (political which mitigate conspiracy-belief Future research implications key limitations all discussed.