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2026 Edelman Trust Barometer. Global Report: Trust Amid Insularity

Edelman Trust Institute (2026), 49 slides

"The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals a world retreating towards insularity. As economic anxiety, geopolitical tension, and technological disruption intensify, people are narrowing their world to smaller, familiar circles that reflect their views, and this hinders economic and societal progress ... more

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Determinants of institutional trust in sub-Saharan Africa: Does media exposure matter?

Nabilatou A. O. Bouraïma, Mamadou Abdoulaye Diallo, Sylvain Hekponhoue

Afrobarometer (2025), 35 pp.

"As the main channel for information about institutions and their performance, the media have the potential to influence citizens' perceptions of them. In recent decades, the media environment has undergone significant change, making different types of information readily available. At the same time ... more

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The Construction of Distributed Trust on Bilibili Under the COVID-19 Pandemic

Siwen Lu, Sijing Lu

International Journal of Communication, volume 18 (2024), pp, 2859-2881

"This study explores the construction of distributed trust under today’s networked environment. Focusing on diaspora micro-influencers’ COVID-19-related videos on Bilibili, this study aims to explore: How platform-specific features of Bilibili enhance the construction of distributed trust; the d ... more

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Misinformation technology: Internet use and political misperceptions in Africa

Joel Cariolle, Yasmine Elkhateeb, Mathilde Maurel

Journal of Comparative Economics, volume 52, issue 2 (2024), pp. 400-433

"The use of the Internet to access news has an impact on African citizens’ perceptions of democracy. Using repeated cross-sectional data from the Afrobarometer survey across 35 African countries over the period 2011–2018, along with an instrumental variable approach, allows addressing potential ... more

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COVID-19 and government trust: A spiral of silence analysis in South America

Stephen M Croucher, Anthony Spencer, Sandra Bustamante, Thao Nguyen, Oscar Gomez

International Communication Gazette, volume 86, issue 7 (2024), pp. 565-580

"The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered prejudices, systemic inequities and critical feelings about governmental institutions around the globe. Since the start of the pandemic, the 12 nations that make up South America have had more than 67 million cases and 1.3 million fatalities. Public trust in and ... more

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Inequity Driven Mistrust: Its Impacts to Infodemic Management and Health Response and What to Do About It

Alejandro Posada, Rocio Lopez Inigo, Majid Beesyna

Internews; USAID (2023), 45 pp.

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Gefühlte Wahrheiten: Orientierung in Zeiten postfaktischer Verunsicherung

Ortwin Renn

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb), Sonderausg. (2023), 266 pp.

"Wirtschaftliche Sorgen, Zukunfts- und Abstiegsängste sowie fehlendes Vertrauen in Politik und Wissenschaft bilden, wie Ortwin Renn erläutert, einen idealen Nährboden für Desinformation und Populismus, indem Tatbestände durch Gefühle verdrängt werden. Renn verdeutlicht, welche mentalen, sozia ... more

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Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy: Preparing the Ground for Government Action

Paris: OECD (2022), 229 pp.

"Democracies are at a critical juncture, under growing internal and external pressures. This publication sheds light on the important public governance challenges countries face today in preserving and strengthening their democracies, including fighting mis- and disinformation; improving government ... more

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Trust and Communication: Foundations of Interconnectivity

Anil Jacob Kunnel

Berlin; Bern; Wien: Peter Lang (2021), 212 pp.

"In today’s global and digitalized world, the investigation of relational trust as part of social connections has remained a popular and interdisciplinary academic topic. This book explores the idea of trust as a basic type of information processing that might be as old as human existence but has ... more

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The Measurement of Trust in Communication Research, Part 2

Paola Pascual-Ferrá

Communication Research Trends, volume 40, issue 1 (2021), pp. 4-36

"In this review of the literature I have attempted to show how researchers in different areas of communication have conceptualized and operationalized trust and trust-related concepts. Trust has been associated most with the concept of credibility, but other words that have been used to operationali ... ze it include believability, accuracy, honesty, truthfulness, trustworthiness, sincerity, competence, expertise, reliability, and goodwill, to name some. The concept of trust, just as credibility, is multi-dimensional, and it seems to depend on the context, the person, and the task that is evaluated, as one may not necessarily trust another with a personal secret but may trust that person to complete a work-related task well. As might have become evident to the reader, our discipline's interest in measuring trust has been mostly utilitarian: trust as a means to an end (e.g., persuasion, credibility, and effectiveness of the communicator, to name some). While not all of the trust-related research in communication has been self-serving, it has focused mostly on the benefits that communicators can derive from growing others' trust in them, and less on the benefit that the act of trusting may have on others beyond the communicator, or other possible outcomes stemming from trust. One of the few exceptions has been in the instructional communication literature, where measures of trust have been used to study levels of student satisfaction, development and learning; interpersonal communication, where measures of trust have been used to study satisfaction in relationships between friends and romantic partners; and health communication, where communicating trust in the patient-provider interaction can increase the patient's self-awareness and sense of well-being. The mostly transactional and utilitarian view of trust that has dominated so far is perhaps a reflection of the increased professionalization of the discipline, the need for practical applications within the business setting and the cultures that sustain them and are in turn sustained by them. It would be interesting for future research to consider trust from the perspective of the person who is doing the trusting what impact does trust have on them beyond being persuaded and returning as consumers of information and products? It would be interesting for future research to approach the study of trust from that perspective as well as from non-traditional (read non-Western/Anglo-Saxon) socioeconomic and cultural perspectives." (Conclusion, page 21) more

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A Narrative Solution: The Relationship Between Solutions Journalism, Narrative Transportation, and News Trust

Kathryn Thier, Jesse Abdenour, Brent Walth, Nicole Smith Dahmen

Journalism, volume 22, issue 10 (2021), pp. 2511–2530

"Lack of trust is a paramount problem facing journalism. Solutions reporting, which focuses on credible responses to societal problems, could help improve news trust. In addition, narrative journalism has been associated with several positive outcomes. This study tested the novel idea that solutions ... more

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Understanding Trust: Global Conversations & Local Realities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Pierrick Judéaux

Internews (2021), 20 pp.

"In this paper, we share selected insights from our work across seven countries facing complex and often protracted preexisting humanitarian crises before the pandemic. Over the past nine months, with Internews’ Rooted in Trust project, we have worked to understand the role of rumors and misinform ... more

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From “Memory Wars” to a Common Future: Overcoming Polarisation in Ukraine

Arena; London School of Economics; Johns Hopkins University, SNF Agora Institute (2021), 95 pp.

"This project has explored the ways in which an independent, public service-spirited media could create content about historical issues that avoids playing into propaganda-driven divides, fosters a more constructive discourse around history and brings Ukrainians into a common national conversation. ... more

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Systemvertrauen und Journalismus im Neoliberalismus

Malte G. Schmidt

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag (2021), 322 pp.

"Vertrauenskrisen haben Konjunktur: Ob Politik, Wissenschaft oder Journalismus - kein gesellschaftliches Teilsystem bleibt von öffentlichen Misstrauensbekundungen verschont. Doch was genau meint der schillernde Begriff »Systemvertrauen« und welche Konsequenzen hat ein Mangel desselben? Malte G. S ... more

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Sticking to the Facts, Building trust: Our Cure for Disinformation

Lausanne: Fondation Hirondelle (2021), 9 pp.

"Fondation Hirondelle's approach to disinformation centres on the fundamental principles of journalism and on the lessons learned from over 25 years of applying these principles in highly fragile contexts, where access to reliable information for the majority is not a given, and where rumours, hate ... more

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The Measurement of Trust in Communication Research, Part 1

Paola Pascual-Ferrá

Communication Research Trends, volume 39, issue 4 (2020), pp. 4-34

"Professor Pascual-Ferrá provides a real service to researchers by assembling not only the story of research into trust but also the key scales with which people examined trust. Taking even a brief look at the tables accompanying this study of trust, one easily sees how unsettled this research area ... more

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An Unfinished Story of Conversion: Clerical Sexual Abuse in Poland. A Communications Case Study on Betrayal, Healing and Trust Recovery

Paulina Guzik

Church, Communication and Culture, volume 5, issue 3 (2020), pp. 417-455

"Poland is one of the most Catholic countries in the world. 33 million out of its 38 million people (92.9% of its population) declare themselves to be Roman Catholic. Church initiatives for the needy, whether poor or immigrants, are everywhere. The Church is a robust and influential institution, str ... more

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Trust in Institutions

Church, Communication and Culture, volume 5, issue 3 (2020), pp. 293-510

"Speaking of trust in the Catholic Church necessarily leads to talking about the management of the crisis of clerical sexual abuse by its leaders. The focus is on managing responsibility and information, with case studies by Paulina Guzik and Patrick O'Brien. The first deals with the case of Poland, ... emphasizing the need for accountability and suggesting five actions to regain trust. O'Brien offers a map of the management of abuses in the 197 dioceses of the United States, and points to transparency in communication and government as a key to regaining trust. As you will read in these pages, neither the communicator nor the communication serves to mask a negative reality. The institution must justify its existence only if it is a good for society, even if it makes mistakes. This question is approached from a theological point of view: Is it still possible to trust the Church? To answer this question, Marco Vanzini highlights the tensions that characterize and define the identity of the Church: such as her divine origin and her human composition, or the inner coexistence of holiness and sin, among others. On the other hand, Gabriel Magalhães, taking a cue from passages of sacred and universal literature, invites reflection on the contrast between human and divine justice, highlighting the excessive and almost ‘scandalous’ nature of divine mercy. Faced with the reality of a certain human solidarity in evil, he explores the need for collective guilt and forgiveness as a common horizon that allows trust to be recovered at the social level. It is precisely ‘the Church communicator’ on whom the article by Professors Gil and Gili puts the focus. His role as spokesman for an institution and bearer of a message gives him great responsibility. The credibility that he demands and needs, the authors maintain, depends to a great extent on his human and professional virtues. Creative fidelity, reliable transmission of an ideal and embodiment of the values he communicates are expected from him. Internal communication in organizations, with the transformation of the channels through which trust travels – more horizontal and collaborative than vertical and hierarchical (Botsman Citation2017) – represents a challenge for those who govern the organization. Receiving trust from the leadership in turn generates confidence in the workers. To put these ‘spirals of trust’ into action, Gara and La Porte analyze one of the most important moments in the relationship between an employee and an organization: recruitment. Trust, they say, must be considered one of the great strategic tools of the Human Resources department. In the legal field, Moreno and Díaz show with a case study the ‘legal defense of corporate reputation’, where law and communication work in a complementary way. In recent years, especially with the digital revolution, new fields of interaction have opened up with their own followers, as well as new spaces for vulnerability (e.g. privacy, personal data, copyright…). In this context of the Internet, the authors present the crisis of reputation of an NGO linked to the Church and show how law and communication are two strategic tools of the organizations destined to collaborate. Looking at trust management in the public sector is a necessary source of inspiration for an institution like the Church. María José Canel conducts the academic interview with Steven Van de Walle on trust in public administration. He deals with a wide range of topics: from the ways of measuring trust and its typologies, to the influence of emotions on the inspiration of trust. The interview offers some comparative considerations between some other institutions, such as NGOs, and the Church. It also includes a final reflection on the new scenario created by COVID-19, which is testing citizens’ trust in the state and the health system. In the public sphere, the management of vulnerability takes on a particular nuance in the case of high reliability organizations, entities that by their nature must avoid errors at all costs (Lekka Citation2011). Sanders takes the criteria of the HROs as her model to measure the trust that the British government has earned (or lost) with its public communication during the pandemic generated by the COVID-19, a situation that has tested the strength of social relations – especially trust toward public services – and that will merit another special issue of this journal." (Editorial: Contents of the special issue, pages 295-296) more

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Transmission or ‘creative Fidelity’? The Institutional Communicator’s Role in the Church Today

Alberto Gil, Guido Gili

Church, Communication and Culture, volume 5, issue 3 (2020), pp. 320-338

"The role of the institutional communicator in the Church today has a special relevance derived from the credibility crisis suffered by this institution. A greatly increased awareness to this theme leads to the discovery of profound and essential dimensions of this role, which are discussed in this ... more

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Community Media: Building Trust and Resilience in Kenyan Post-Election Conflicts

Jacinta Mwende Maweu

African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review, volume 9, issue 2 (2019), pp. 9-32

"This article examines the constructive roles of community and faith-based radio in building resilience and trust in Kenya after post-election violence. Since the 2007/08 post-election violence, Kenya has had two hotly contested elections (2013 and 2017), which have contributed to the lack of trust ... more