This is a preprint of an accepted article scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Asian Perspective. It has been copyedited but not paginated. Further edits are possible. Please check back for final article publication details. News Media Effects on Political Institutional and System Trust: The Moderating Role of Political Values Xiaoxiao Meng and Shuhua Zhou This paper explores the correlation between media effects and political trust, as well as the moderating factor in the equation. Specifically, the authors measured political trust within two categories: institutional trust and system trust. Analyses were based on two waves of surveys conducted among Internet users (2014: N = 2,970; 2017: N = 2,379) in China. Results indicated that (a) exposure to official media was positively correlated with political trust, whereas exposure to individual media and overseas media were negatively correlated with political trust, and exposure commercial media was a non-significant factor; (b) correlation was higher for institutional trust than system trust; (c) political values were a significant moderating factor. Implications are discussed. Keywords: news media effects, political trust, political values, moderating factor, China. Political trust is a crucial component for democracy (Putnam 1993) as low levels of trust contribute to a political environment in which it is “difficult for leaders to succeed” (Hetherington 1998, 791). Many political communications scholars have researched the effects that exposure to news media has on an individual’s political trust. (e.g., Warren, Sulaiman, and Jaafar 2014; Ceron 2015). In previous studies, the relationship between news 1 This is a preprint of an accepted article scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Asian Perspective. It has been copyedited but not paginated. Further edits are possible. Please check back for final article publication details. exposure and political trust has commonly been explained with reference to two opposing media theories: the video malaise (Robinson 1976) and the virtuous circle (Norris 2000) theories. Video malaise claims that negativity, incivility, and lack of substance in the media cause viewers to have declining levels of political trust (Mutz and Reeves 2005). The opposite thesis, the virtuous circle theory, argues that those with higher levels of trust tend to consume more political news, and that such prolonged exposure engenders political trust (Norris 1999). In this paper, we make two crucial arguments. First of all, media effects on political trust depends on two concepts, media consumption and media trust, and that measuring media consumption only on political trust is too simplistic. We have to account for how much trust people have in a particular medium. Second, political trust is better investigated by separating its components to system trust and institutional trust, one more stable than the other, and therefore differently affected by media influences. We believe such conceptualization will give us a much fuller picture of the equation of media and political trust. In addition, few studies have established the functions of political values. Political values can be considered an enduring predisposition in the political belief systems (Goren 2005). They represent and reflect prescriptive beliefs and principles about humanity, society, and public affairs (Rokeach 1973; Feldman 1988). In terms of the role of political values in the relationship between media consumption and political trust, previous studies have focused on the mediating effects of political values, including authoritarian values (Zhang and Dai 2014) and self-expression values (Su and Huang 2015). Ample evidence in political 2 This is a preprint of an accepted article scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Asian Perspective. It has been copyedited but not paginated. Further edits are possible. Please check back for final article publication details. communications effects show that media effects are likely to be conditional rather than universal, dependent not only on media content but also on the orientations of the audiences (McLeod, Kosicki, and McLeod 2009, 238). Theoretically, values orientation is a basic personality trait (Bogaert, Boone, and Declerck 2008) and should be seen as a moderator that affects the relationship between the independent and dependent variables (Baron and Kenny 1986). Therefore, the principal aim of this article is to contribute conceptually and empirically to delineating boundary conditions on the formation of political trust. In order words, we need to understand what kinds of effects happen to what kind of people, rather than treating users homogenously. Only a few studies have been conducted on its moderating role. Meng and Li (2021) developed a moderated mediation model, for example, which found that authoritarian values play a moderating role on hierarchical political trust. However, that study did not consider political values and did not tease out institutional trust and system trust in political trust. This article specifically singles out political values and tested their moderating role on political trust conceptually and empirically so we can delineate boundary conditions on the formation of institutional trust and system trust. We use two waves of large representative survey data from Chinese Internet users to provide reliable and stable results. This study is organized as follows. First, this article examines the relationship between news media (including official media, commercial media, individual media, and overseas media) and political trust (divided into the subcategories of institutional trust and system trust). Second, we discuss the moderating role of political values in this relationship. Finally, we outline our analyses, findings, conclusions, and engage in a further discussion 3 This is a preprint of an accepted article scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Asian Perspective. It has been copyedited but not paginated. Further edits are possible. Please check back for final article publication details. based on our results. We find firstly, official media enhance political institutional and system trust, while individual and overseas media undermine political trust. For commercial media, it has a greater positive effect on short-term political trust, like institutional trust but smaller or even insignificant effect on long-term political trust, like system trust despite it is under central government’s control in China. Secondly, media news has greater impacts on institutional trust than system trust, which suggests that political system trust is less likely to be influenced by the media compared with political institution trust. Lastly, media effects on political trust are also conditional and boundary, such effect is mainly reflected in people with low authoritarian values because those with high authoritarian values trust the government by nature. Literature Review Explaining Political Trust Political trust refers to a public mindset that recognizes the legitimacy of a regime (Easton 1965) or a citizen’s confidence in the government or political system (Miller 1974). Research on the origin of political trust involves institutional explanations as well as sociocultural explanations (Mishler and Rose 2001), which are considered mutually complementary (Ma 2007). Institutional explanations indicate that political trust is an endogenous, rational assessment of the performance of government and the credibility of political institutions (Newton 2001). Low levels of trust in the government undermine the rule of law and perceived governmental legitimacy (Tolbert and Mossberger 2006). The Chinese government, 4 This is a preprint of an accepted article scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of Asian Perspective. It has been copyedited but not paginated. Further edits are possible. Please check back for final article publication details. ruling an authoritarian society, is particularly concerned about popular support for the legitimacy of its regime and trust in its politics, especially in a period of rapid transition (Shen and Guo 2013). On the other hand, the sociocultural explanation holds that political trust is exogenous and rooted both in cultural norms and in the long-range, ingrained pride of a system, which is formed in the socialization process. Previous studies showed that political trust in East Asian countries reflects traditional Confucian values, such as hierarchism (Shin 2013), which is based on paternalistic families (Pye 1992). Ma (2007) studied eight Asian countries and found that authoritarian values are positively correlated with citizens’ levels of political trust. Shi (2014, 7) also affirmed that cultural norms such as authority orientation which “encourages people to be more politically active” are positively correlated with political trust. In terms of conceptualizing political trust, many scholars measure political trust at the institutional level (Rudolph and Evans 2005; Hooghe, Marien, and Vroome 2012)—including trust in administrative, legal, and societal institutions (Yang and Tang 2010) as well as trust in the national and local governments (Li 2004, 2013, 2016; Wu and Wilkes 2018; Su et al. 2016). However, political trust also denotes trust in a political system (Miller 1974). Hooghe et al. (2012) held the same belief and argued that political trust was based on a perception of the trustworthiness of the political system. In addition, Mutz and Reeves (2005) considered support