Prof Catherine Happer
Lead of the Media, Culture and Society subject group at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Glasgow University Media Group. She has led focus group studies with Scottish audiences including one undertaken in the pre-election period investigating media, public trust and political representation.
Dr James Morrison
Associate Professor in Journalism Studies at the University of Stirling. He is the author of two monographs focusing on the tension between media-political discourses and lived experiences, The Left Behind and The Workless, and an OUP textbook on British politics, Essential Public Affairs for Journalists.
Dr Lluis de Nadal
Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society at the University of Glasgow. His research examines the intersection of media and democracy, including threats to information integrity and the impact of misinformation on support for climate action.
Scottish Election 2026
Section 2: News, media and journalism
- News consumption in Scotland (Dr Camila Montalverne)
- TikTok’s For You Page recommendations during the Scottish Parliament election (Dr Dayei Oh, Dr Chamil Rathnayake)
- From participation to consumption? Youth engagement and “parasocial media” (Dr James Dennis)
- The battle for trust in the Holyrood election (Prof Catherine Happer, Dr James Morrison, Dr Lluis de Nadal)
- Polls over policy in UK-wide TV news coverage of Elections (Dr Maxwell Modell, Dr Keighley Perkins, Prof Stephen Cushion)
- Legacy news coverage of the election – Leaders debate and press coverage (Dr Steven Harkins)
- All right, own up, who let the woman in? (Dr Fiona McKay, Dr Melody House)
- Negotiations of the constitutional question (Dr Maike Dinger)
Just over a year ago, in his first Bute House press conference as First Minister, John Swinney set out his mission to “renew public trust in politics” by uniting Scots against the “radical right”. In a crucial speech days before the election while outlining plans for the first 100 days of the new parliament, Swinney condemned Starmer’s Labour for repaying “trust with broken promises”. He claimed the SNP, by contrast, offered “reliable, trusted leadership”. In framing the election as a battle over trust, Swinney is tapped into a global climate of unease. Over the last 25 years, the Edelman Trust has charted declining trust in liberal democracies across the world, with the 2003 Iraq war, 2008 financial crisis, 2020 pandemic, and Ukraine war all undermining trust in governments, media and conventional expertise. Distrust is particularly high in the UK.
Trust in governments, the political system and, especially, the information environment is very important during elections, when citizens decide who runs the country. Historically, this is when major broadcasters like the BBC come into their own, by scrutinising competing parties through coverage of leaders’ debates and policy speeches. Trust here rests upon the principles of evidence-gathering, accuracy and conventional ideas about political knowledge and expertise – principles on which professional journalism is founded. But judging by the pre-election focus groups we conducted at the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG), trust in both mainstream political parties and news media is now perilously low for some groups.
Mounting distrust is a now well-documented trajectory for traditional media, prompting audiences to increasingly go elsewhere for news. In this election, this was exacerbated by some debates only being broadcast on the BBC Scotland channel, which attracts only a minority of Scottish viewers.
Moves away from traditional news may feel inevitable in a media ecosystem radically reshaped by platforms competing relentlessly for our attention. But our research indicates that the changing information landscape is only part of the story: this shift should also be attributed to growing distrust in a professional media which is believed to serve the political class. Public (dis)trust in governments, institutions and media are bound up together. In particular, those in lower socio-economic groups and younger adults seek information free of what they see as “mainstream” agendas.
This takes them to myriad “news alternatives” – podcasters, YouTubers, bloggers, and independent outlets – which turn traditional models of trust on their heads. Instead of prizing hard evidence and accuracy, they trade in authenticity, personalised narratives and intimacy to convince people of the legitimacy of information being shared.
Being a critical and selective information consumer can be a positive thing. Those relying upon new alternatives are often exposed to new ideas and better informed on issues poorly covered by traditional outlets – on climate change, for example. But this mode of consumption leaves people more exposed to disinformation, with distrust easily exploited in an economy built on emotional engagement. Expressing scepticism about establishment narratives alone can be enough to secure trust.
This cynical media environment has developed in parallel with the fragmentation of British politics – culminating in last week’s elections across the UK which shattered the Westminster Labour-Conservative duopoly of 100 years. Though Nigel Farage received disproportionate attention on television, with over 30 appearances on Question Time before he was even an MP, it’s possibly the narratives of distrust circulating in “alternative” spaces that most fuel the rise of Reform UK, whose defining motif is that “trust in politics is broken”. While Reform’s Scottish leader, ex-Tory Malcolm Offord, sets a more aspirational tone, he too promotes this “broken system” frame.
In our pre-election study, this frame resonated with the most distrustful focus group participants. Some praised Farage for talking “common sense” – which they found difficult to disagree with. Others welcomed Reform’s disruption of the status quo. Even where participants disliked the party’s policies, they understood its appeal to disillusioned voters. One young woman suggested the pressure Reform have put on established parties might force them to “up their game”. For others, the Greens represented the disruption that was necessary. And yet we also saw the SNP continuing to benefit from “outsider” status in a legacy two-party system – despite having been in government since 2007.
Reform certainly disrupted the Scottish election – depriving the Parliament of a clear-cut “opposition” by tying with Labour on seats – but it did not perform as well as some polls predicted. While distrust helped the party break through, our research indicates it may also have hampered the extent of its advance. Where Reform once welcomed associations with Donald Trump, the chaos he brings to global security now fuels fears of more broken promises on making things “great”. Another factor may be Offord’s ill-advised late campaign boast that he owns “six homes, five cars and six boats” which can’t have helped in an election where the cost-of-living crisis is a priority.
The SNP won for many reasons. But one is that, in a world of contested claims around (dis)trust, at least enough voters took reassurance from Swinney’s promise of “reliable, trusted leadership”.
