On Thursday, the Media Academy released its annual trust barometer, which measures the public’s confidence in institutions, political parties, media, and companies. This year’s survey shows, among other things, that trust in society’s institutions is on the rise, while faith in media outlets like Aftonbladet and Expressen is substantially lower.

Despite other surveys indicating low confidence in the police’s ability to prevent and solve crimes, the police still enjoy the highest level of confidence among Swedes at 75 percent, roughly the same as last year.

In second place, Systembolaget comes in with 73 percent, followed by the Swedish Armed Forces at 69 percent.

– The troubled world situation and the fact that we are entering an election year may explain the higher confidence in institutions. At the same time, we see a clear trend shift regarding perceptions of who influences democracy, says Per Söderpalm, board member of Media Academy and head of public opinion at Verian.

While the royal family reached its highest score ever, things are looking worse for NATO, which dropped ten percentage points. Confidence in political parties, the government, and the state as a whole is also on the rise, as is optimism about the future (up eight percentage points).

Others at the bottom include Sida, the Swedish Migration Agency, and the Public Employment Service. The fastest riser this year is the Riksbank, which has increased trust by 15 percentage points in two years.

Media

Among the media, Sveriges Radio enjoys the highest trust at 65 percent. However, the downward trend is clear—back in 2013, it was 76 percent. SVT comes close with 62 percent. At the bottom are Aftonbladet and Expressen, with 18 and 16 percent confidence, respectively. Fewer and fewer people also believe in journalists’ influence.

39 percent perceive SVT as left-leaning, 59 percent as neutral, and three percent as right-leaning. Roughly the same numbers apply to Sveriges Radio. Svenska Dagbladet is perceived as the least leftist.

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– More detailed analyses show that perceptions of news journalism are strongly influenced by people’s own ideological perspectives. Those who perceive news media as left-leaning tend to identify further to the right themselves, says Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson, board member of Media Academy and professor at the University of Gothenburg.

Confidence in the media, however, varies greatly depending on how one votes:

Companies

When it comes to companies, Systembolaget is in a clear first place (73 percent), followed by Ikea (59) and Volvo (44). At the bottom are Tesla (8), H&M (18), and SJ (24).

Just like in opinion polls, things are not going well here for the Liberal Party either:

A completely new aspect of trust included in the survey is the public’s rating of various social actors regarding competence and good intentions:

Summary:

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