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A generalized climate of distrust in political institutions is not functional to healthy democracies. With the advent of social media, recent scholarly efforts attempt to better understand people's conspiracy theory beliefs in inhibiting institutional trust. This study contributes to this literature by considering the direct antecedent effects of uncertainty avoidance and the moderating role of active social media use—SMU (i.e., interactional SMU, informational SMU, and political expressive SMU). The former is theorized to enable conspiracy theories to thrive, while the latter should cushion the negative effects of conspiracy beliefs on institutional trust. Relying on diverse survey data across different cultures from Europe, the Americas, and New Zealand (N = 11,958) and applying structural equation modeling, findings supported the hypothesized model. In high uncertainty‐avoidance societies, where less well‐known situations are perceived as uncomfortable or downright threatening, conspiracy beliefs proliferate and negatively impact institutional trust. Active SMU attenuates these effects. Via social media, citizens have the ability to strengthen social relationships (interactional SMU), keep themselves informed about the community (informational SMU), and engage in political self‐expression (political expressive SMU), which mitigate conspiracy‐belief negative effects on institutional trust. Future research implications and key limitations of the study are all discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Masspersonal information seeking repertoires are a person-centered method of gaining insight into the relationship between Internet use, subjective well-being, and political participation. Through latent profile analysis, three person types were identified in two waves of stratified samples in 18 countries (N = 8352). In accord with the "augmentation hypothesis," high levels of interpersonal contact and traditional mass media usage covaried with high Internet use for the highly engaged type, that had highest political participation and life satisfaction, political knowledge, low depressive symptoms and also high anxiety. The other two types fit the "displacement hypothesis," where Internet-based media displaces traditional media and face-to-face communication. Compared with the digitally immersed, the traditional repertoire was more knowledgeable and politically engaged, and had better well-being. Latent transition analysis showed these repertoires were stable over 6 months. Identifying different types of people with different information seeking styles clarifies mixed results on effects of online mass media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The augmentation and displacement hypotheses generated two mediators for the relationship between social media use and mental health. A representative online sample of 1157 New Zealanders (stratified on age, gender, and region) were measured on social media use for networking, offline social capital, internet addiction, anxiety, and depression. Results showed that social media use for networking's relationship with anxiety and depression was mediated by both offline social capital and internet addiction. Anxiety and depression were lower when mediated by offline social capital, and higher when mediated by internet addiction. Applied to everyday social life, this suggests that when someone uses social media to build on pre-existing offline social capital, their mental health is "augmented". However, if their online social connections are unrelated to their offline social capital, this might be associated with an internet addiction where their offline social life is "displaced" by over-reliance on brittle online connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]