Adolescents’ trust in political content from influencers: The roles of motive attribution and parental mediation

In today’s fragmented media landscape, social media influencers (SMIs) have emerged as popular political information sources among young audiences—despite often lacking political expertise. However, we have limited knowledge about factors that predict trust in SMIs’ political content during early and middle adolescence, a critical period during which political attitudes are formed. This study proposes two novel theoretical pathways to explain varying trust perceptions between and within adolescents: a source-centered pathway, focusing on observed SMI-audience interactions and motive attribution, and an audience-centered pathway, emphasizing adolescents’ digital literacy and parental mediation. A three-wave panel survey (NW3 = 799 parent-child dyads) shows that trust in SMIs’ political information is higher among those adolescents who view SMIs as involved with their audiences and altruistically motivated, and among adolescents with high digital literacy and whose parents engage in active mediation. However, changes in these variables do not predict deviations from adolescents’ usual trust levels.