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“I don’t trust the media.”

Among Azerbaijani youth, this sentence is not a provocation or a political statement. It is said calmly, often without emphasis, and usually followed by action: opening Telegram, scrolling Instagram, clicking through YouTube, or checking a news site.

Despite widespread mistrust, media consumption has not declined. News is read, compared, questioned, forwarded, and filtered on a daily basis. What has changed is not whether young people consume media, but how they relate to it. In this context, many young people describe consuming news less as an act of belief and more as a practical necessity.

This article draws on interviews with Azerbaijani youth and a sociologist to examine how young people navigate a media environment they do not fully trust and what this reveals about life after trust.

Reading without relying

Heyran Amiraliyeva (name anonymised) follows the news daily through both direct news websites and the social media accounts of media organisations. Her focus shifts between domestic developments and global events. Yet trust, she explains, is not what determines whether she reads a story.

There are topics, particularly those involving marginalised groups, where she feels local media either avoids coverage or relies on discriminatory language. In such cases, she turns to independent outlets. Still, she continues to read local news not to rely on it, but to observe it closely.

She reads to see which details are included, which are excluded, and how language is applied. Local media, for her, becomes an object of analysis rather than a source of authority.

Ali Rashidli (name anonymised) describes a similar approach. He relies primarily on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram and follows political and social issues closely. At the same time, he makes a point of checking Azerbaijani news websites at least once a week, not because he considers them fully credible, but because he wants to understand how they frame events.

What interests him is not only what is reported, but how reliability itself is defined: which events are emphasised, which are downplayed, and how international developments are interpreted.

In both cases, media consumption continues even in the absence of trust, as described by the interviewees. The media is read not to be believed, but to be assessed.

Sharing with hesitation

Mistrust becomes even more visible when it comes to sharing information.

Heyran Amiraliyeva explains that she hesitates to share news when she doubts the credibility of the source. In such cases, she prefers to wait until the information appears on outlets she considers more reliable. However, there are moments when she shares content she does not fully believe, particularly when she suspects it is being circulated to test public reaction.

In these cases, sharing becomes a way to express an opinion rather than to endorse a fact. Sometimes this happens publicly on social media; at other times, privately, in one-to-one conversations.

Ali Rashidli points to a newer layer of scepticism. Before sharing video content, he increasingly checks whether it may have been generated by artificial intelligence, especially if he intends to send it to older relatives. If the artificial origin of the content does not fundamentally alter its emotional or informational impact, he may still share it. If it does, he refrains.

Neither describes this behaviour as exceptional. Hesitation, verification, and conditional sharing are treated as normal parts of everyday media use.

Choosing platforms by function

Rather than relying on a single trusted source, interviewees describe a platform-specific approach. Telegram is used for speed and immediacy, even when accuracy is uncertain. Instagram pages and influencers offer tone and emotional framing rather than detailed information. YouTube functions as a space for explanation, habit, and learning.

Ali Rashidli describes YouTube as both a personal and practical choice. Subjectively, he says, he has always learned through YouTube; his “brain is used to it”. Objectively, he combines it with Telegram or the primary source cited in a news story to reach more detailed information quickly.

Local news websites, by contrast, are rarely used as primary sources. They are monitored to understand framing rather than to resolve uncertainty.
International media occupies a separate category. Shahla Tagiyeva (name anonymised) primarily follows outlets such as BBC, The Guardian, DW, Reuters, and Forbes through their websites and Instagram pages. She rarely checks local sources, citing a lack of transparency. Her interests lie mainly in art, history, and technology; she avoids political news unless it has a direct impact on daily life.

Yet even here, trust remains conditional. “The media can always be manipulated,” she adds. Avoidance, for her, is not disengagement but a deliberate boundary.

Together, these accounts point to a structured and platform-specific pattern of media use.

Working without trust

For Khanim Abbaszada (name anonymised), a journalism graduate working in technology news and content writing, mistrust is part of professional routine.

She follows global news closely through social media accounts of major media organisations and technology-focused outlets. When it comes to news about Azerbaijan, however, she avoids relying on social platforms, which she considers unreliable for domestic coverage.

She does not fully trust Azerbaijani news outlets, but follows them out of necessity. Several times a day, she checks the news, selects items relevant to her work, and verifies information through official press releases, particularly when government institutions are involved.

Her mistrust is not limited to local reporting. She avoids Azerbaijani outlets for international news altogether, citing political framing, poor translations, and a tendency to prioritise speed over context. In economic and financial reporting, she notes, figures are often presented without explanation or analysis, which makes them difficult to rely on.

Sharing news, whether professionally or personally, is something she tries to avoid when accuracy is uncertain. Yet professional pressure complicates this principle. Delaying publication to verify information can lead to tension in the newsroom, where speed is often prioritised over certainty.

Emotion, she adds, is the most common reason accuracy slips. News that triggers anger or sadness makes critical distance harder to maintain. When mistakes occur, they are usually the result of emotional intensity rather than lack of awareness.

When analysis disappears

One of the most consistent themes across interviews is not misinformation, but the absence of explanation.

From Abbaszada’s perspective, there is no Azerbaijani outlet she trusts for analysis. When she wants to understand an issue in depth, she collects information from multiple sources, including social media commentary and turns to AI tools to summarise content and test consistency.

She also uses these tools to see how similar issues are handled in other countries. While this sometimes helps, it rarely provides Azerbaijan-specific insight, due to the lack of reliable local references.

The process is slow and exhausting. Over time, this has reduced her motivation to seek out Azerbaijani analysis at all. Gradually, she finds herself disengaging from local issues, forming opinions based on other countries’ experiences, and losing interest in domestic news.

Mistrust as a social response

Sociologist Tahmina Jumshudlu argues that media mistrust should not be understood as an individual preference, but as a socially produced response.

Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, she explains that dominant media narratives tend to reflect the worldview of ruling groups rather than the lived experiences of marginalised ones. Subordinate groups, she argues, recognise this mismatch and develop distrust not as apathy, but as resistance.

Learning what not to believe is inseparable from learning what not to say. Referring to Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the panopticon, Jumshudlu notes that families, schools, workplaces, and public institutions operate as spaces of diffuse surveillance. Through socialisation, young people internalise self-censorship and learn to monitor their own behaviour.

In such contexts, avoiding belief or commitment becomes a form of self-protection. Indifference, she argues, is often carefully learned.

Media use under constant uncertainty

The need to continuously cross-check information creates cognitive and emotional labour. While it encourages scepticism and critical distance, it also makes engagement demanding. Over time, some young people avoid news altogether, not because they lack interest, but because accessing reliable information feels exhausting.

Jumshudlu notes that humour, irony, and performative carelessness often function as coping mechanisms. These attitudes allow young people to distance themselves from power structures while protecting themselves from exclusion. At the same time, they rarely translate into sustained civic engagement.

Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, she argues that when media loses its communicative function and becomes purely strategic, meaningful participation becomes difficult. Young people are pushed toward spectatorship rather than dialogue.

After trust

Azerbaijani youth are not uninformed, nor are they indifferent. They read, compare, verify, hesitate, and share information carefully, often across multiple platforms and sources.

European debates on media frequently centre on how trust can be restored. The experiences described in this article point to a different reality, one in which trust was never stable enough to function as a lasting foundation. In such contexts, reduced belief does not necessarily signal disengagement. It can also be understood as a form of adaptation to long-term uncertainty.

While these patterns cannot be generalised to all young people, similar patterns can be observed in how audiences respond to news across comment sections on different platforms.

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