Exploring Citizens’ Lived Experiences of Trust in Government Communication Amid Digital Disinformation

Abstract

Political communication in the digital era has undergone a major transformation due to the rise of disinformation and declining public trust in government institutions. Within this evolving landscape, understanding the subjective experience of trust has become central to analyzing how citizens interpret and respond to government messages. However, prior studies have largely relied on quantitative or message-effect approaches, leaving limited insight into how individuals actually experience and reconstruct trust amid conflicting information environments. Therefore, this study explicitly aims to examine how citizens subjectively construct and interpret trust in government communication within digital disinformation settings. This study addresses that gap by employing an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore how citizens make sense of government communication in the context of digital disinformation. Data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 12 digitally active citizens, and analyzed thematically to uncover core experiential patterns. The findings reveal that trust emerges as a fluid, interpretative process, shaped by emotion, reflection, and social interaction rather than by message accuracy alone. Participants described trust as being reconstructed through authenticity, empathy, and moral coherence in government communication. These results provide a deeper understanding of trust as a lived experience, offering new theoretical insights into the relational and ethical dimensions of political communication. The study underscores the need for dialogical and empathetic communication strategies in public governance and invites further research to expand phenomenological inquiry across different cultural and institutional contexts.