Topic The Crisis of Trust: Organizations under public scrutiny. (775334008Y)
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Lecture 1 - Introduction
What is trust?
- The general sense of well-being in relation to one’s self and towards others
- Essential attribute of human character and interpersonal interaction
- Feeling secure in expectations of good outcomes in daily life
- The realisation of social expectations
- An interaction imperative
- Greater trust is good for social relationships and for exchange
- Reciprocity (= equal exchange) is important
- In our globalised world a more generalised interpersonal trust is necessary
Importance of trust
- Helpful externality that improves economic processes and exchange in market → low
trust can lead to deviations like mafia practices
- Trust is also necessary to build a civil society and a sustainable democracy
- Trust on institutions depends on how well they meet societal expectations
Ariely (2015)
- Understanding trust
- Political trust (diffuse support for the political system)
- Media trust (credibility, farness, scepticism)
- Relation between media trust and political trust
- Overall evaluation of institutions
- Both important for trust in democracy
- As a broader evaluation of information environment and instructions
- Important for trust in democracy (can’t trust without being rightfully informed)
- Different media environments
- Media autonomy (allows for more critical media)
- Journalistic professionalism (public-service orientation and
professional norms)
- Party/press parallelism (media system parallels party system)
- Findings
- “Virtuous circle”
- Relation trust press and politics weaker when more media autonym and
professionalism and less party/press parallelism
- Well-functioning democracy requires trustworthy flow of information
- Conclusion
- Trust is contextual and conditional
- Strong correlation between trust in press and politics
- Hinting towards an overall trust assessment
Flew (2019)
- Populist moment→ he uneven effects of globalisation on employment and national
economies, migration, racist backlash, and social anxiety’ act as structural supports
for ‘populist rhetoric [that] resonates with anti-elite sentiments, frustration and
, disenchantment with the failings of democracy as well as anxieties and opposition to
aspects of globalisation (Politics definition)
- Populism in the mediatisation are strongly related
- Factors underpinning the rise of populism
- Rise of fake news
- Political and economic gains
- Social media as catalyst of fake news
- Platformization
- Network monopoly
- With social news more alternative/sceptical sources and partisan
news
- The crisis of institutional trust
- Institutions failing societal expectations
- Public opinion data: drop in institutional trust in Western liberal
democracies
- Lower trust in digital platforms
- Spiral of distrust
- Post global populism
- It is the relationship between the crisis of trust and the growing opposition of
globalisation, most clearly manifest in the rise of populist nationalisms, that
creates the demand for fake news and the disengagement from public
institutions, including those of the media
- While we once looked to the Internet as providing new avenues of
accountability and transparency that would challenge elite power by enabling
more bottom-up formations that would hold truth to power against powerful
institutions, this is appearing less and less likely
Moreno, et al. (2021)
- Trust is critical to the functioning of our society and central to PR (= strategic
communication)
- How is trust in PR perceived on three levels (New Institutionalism Theory):
- Macro (society/professional)
- Meso (the department in the organisation)
- Micro (individual)
- Who trusts the profession and the departments?
- Top executives
- Influencers and bloggers
- Journalists
- General public
- Modest antagonism between communication professionals and journalists remains
- General public is sceptical about communication professionals
- Who trusts the professional?
- Co-workers
- Top executives
- Internal clients
- Journalists
- Publics they have direct contact with
- Internal/individual trust is perceived as bigger than external trust
, - Who trusts the general public the most?
- External experts
- Top executives
- External supporters/fans
- Other employees (non communication)
- Communication and PR professionals
- Marketing and sales representatives
- Activists
- Building trust in the organisation and their context, not so much in the leaders
- Communication that can build trust:
- Based on knowledge (true facts)
- Transparent
- Ethical
- Conclusions
- Individual trust is higher than trust in departments/profession
- Trust is key challenge for ‘post-truth’ societies with an increasingly
proliferation of fake news and strategically planned misinformation
- Interpersonal relations / communication works best for activating/building trust
Lecture 2 - Trust affected by media bias and misinformation
Crisis of trust
- Media as an organisation is more and more under attack
- Potential sources of distrusts:
- Structural biases (negativity and distortion bias)
- Biases on individual level (journalists and norm of objectivity)
- Accusations of fake news
- Talking about fake news (salience and context of misinformation threat)
Van der Meer et al., (2022) - Media bias
- The world is doing better that we expect → factfullness study
- Could be related to news
- Does the news really mirror reality? Can it distort reality for people?
- Reason for distrust in the media?
- Changes in the media landscape
- Commercial pressure
- Professionalization
- Decreasing press-party parallelism (everyone is your audience)
- Measurable output (number of clicks)
- Struggle for complete coverage of what happens in society
- Reduce complexity and simplify news selection → selection heuristics (news
values) - it becomes a simplification of what happens in the world
- Negativity bias
- News value which is considered to attract largest audience
- Dramatic and sensation
- Bad news is considered a synonym for good news
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