Religious information repertoires in Switzerland’s hybrid information environment: asymmetric associations with trust and reputation

Abstract

In hybrid media environments, public understanding emerges from patterned combinations of legacy news media, digital platforms, and interpersonal communication. Rather than relying on single channels, individuals assemble repertoires of mediated sources, interpersonal encounters, and direct personal experiences that structure how they make sense of public issues and evaluate social groups. Religion provides an instructive case: as a morally charged and contested domain, it circulates across hybrid media environments while also being shaped by biographical and interpersonal experience. Drawing on a Swiss online survey conducted in 2024 (N = 1,000), we use latent class analysis (LCA) to identify six religious information repertoires based on patterns of digital media use, legacy news consumption, and interpersonal experience. These repertoires are associated with distinct patterns of trust and reputation across Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Overall, this study advances research on hybrid media environments by showing that combinations of various sources function as infrastructures of public evaluation. The findings indicate that legacy news media and interpersonal experience remain central, while digital-born sources play a more selective role. The study refines repertoire theory and illustrates how everyday information behavior is associated with social recognition and mistrust, with implications for the social-relational foundations of cohesion in pluralistic societies.