"Digital trust initiatives strive to address complex problems and have multiple goals: from empowering users, to improving journalistic practices, to driving audiences and revenues to trusted news sources—and they cannot achieve such goals alone. Bolstering trustworthy news outlets and the content
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they produce in the digital information ecosystem is no easy undertaking. It entails interfacing with a diverse set of stakeholders—readers, journalists, news organizations, platforms, and advertisers—all of whom have distinct behaviors, goals, and incentives. Yet, the potential payback is immense if all the parts in this complex system can be aligned toward a similar objective. Cooperation among these initiatives as well as with other key industry actors in this sector will be key. There are signs that such collaboration is underway.
The Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) emergency protocol powered by NewsGuard aims to support news outlets at risk and will be tested for the first time in Ukraine later this year. It is a potentially promising example of how these initiatives can work together to help newsrooms around the world establish their credibility and transparency in times of crisis. There are also indications of increased cooperation between these initiatives and tech companies. A recently launched project shows the potential for collaboration among multiple digital news trust initiatives and online platforms: the Microsoft Journalism Hub, a resource center built to connect the journalism community with tools, technology, services, and partner programs. Among its features, it includes NewsGuard’s indicator tools and offers support for JTI’s certification program. Digital trust initiatives have set ambitious goals, but their ambitions for change at a global scale remain largely unproven as these efforts are still quite young. Additionally, the opacity of platforms’ content curation and moderation processes, and the lack of data on advertisers’ investment decisions, contributes to a dearth of concrete evidence on how these actors are actually using these indicators and standards—if they are using them at all. The extent to which these initiatives will gain broader traction is yet to be seen." (Conclusions)
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"Four Forces That Lead To Polarization: 1. Economic Anxieties: Economic optimism is collapsing around the world, with 24 of 28 countries seeing all-time lows in the number of people who think their families will be better off in five years. 2. Institutional Imbalance: Business is now the sole instit
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ution seen as competent and ethical; government is viewed as unethical and incompetent. Business is under pressure to step into the void left by government. 3. Mass-Class Divide: People in the top quartile of income live in a different trust reality than those in the bottom quartile, with 20+ point gaps in Thailand, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. 4. The Battle for Truth: A shared media environment has given way to echo chambers, making it harder to collaboratively solve problems. Media is not trusted, with especially low trust in social media." (Page 4)
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"In den vergangenen Jahren wurde vermehrt darüber diskutiert, ob und in welchem Ausmaß das Vertrauen der Bürgerinnen und Bürger in mediale Berichterstattungen abgenommen hat. Begriffe wie „Lügenpresse“, grassierende Falschinformationen und die von vielen Beobachtern festgestellte gesellscha
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ftliche Polarisierung verleiten zu dem Schluss, dass das Vertrauen in die etablierten Medien gesunken sein müsse. Aber lässt sich dies auch empirisch feststellen? Die Mainzer Langzeitstudie zum Medienvertrauen hat über mehrere Jahre hinweg Daten erhoben und ausgewertet. Ihre Ergebnisse und Schlüsse zeichnen erstmals ein systematisches, auf repräsentativen Meinungsumfragen basierendes Stimmungsbild zur Einstellung der deutschen Bevölkerung zum Mediensystem und zur Berichterstattung für die Jahre 2015 bis 2020. Die Autorinnen und Autoren belassen es nicht bei der Darstellung der Forschungsergebnisse, sondern leiten daraus Vorschläge ab, wie das Medienvertrauen künftig gestärkt beziehungsweise zurückgewonnen werden kann." (Verlagsinformation)
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"The Internews Trust Framework offers a perspective to gauge the presence of trust and, importantly, to understand why certain sources of information might be more, or lesstrusted. This framework consists of four key elements of trust, each comprising threecomponents. This enables us to analyze, mon
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itor, plan, and assess with the goal offostering, enhancing, or nurturing trust. Crucially, this framework operates on the principle that the goal of informationproviders is not blind trust. High-quality information benefits from being subject toconstructive scrutiny, and information providers should be open to questions and begenuinely accountable to their audiences." (Page 2)
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"This report provides an assessment of the media landscape in Jordan from the perspective of its audiences. Based on audience research, it examines the key issues emerging around media usage, trust, content, and literacy. It is based on data that was collected throughout June and July 2023; the medi
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a landscape may have changed since the war in Gaza began." (Abstract)
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"In this report, we qualitatively examine how audiences who lack trust in most news organisations in their countries navigate the digital information environment, especially how they make sense of the news they encounter while using social media, messaging applications, or search engines. Drawing on
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a sample of 100 individuals in four countries – Brazil, India, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) – we centre on how they use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Google, based on a unique interviewing approach anchored in their concrete everyday experiences. Participants were asked to describe and respond to what they actually saw on their screens as they navigated these platforms in real time while speaking to members of our research team. This research is focused on individuals with minimal trust in most news sources and below-average interest in politics – a population often neglected in audience research since these individuals tend to be least likely to consume news. However, for that same reason, understanding the way they encounter and engage with information online is of particular importance. Indeed, in line with prior survey-based research (Toff et al. 2021c), we found these individuals tended to be indifferent towards, or even opposed to, the idea of receiving news through platforms, which they said they primarily used for other purposes. What we found is that when they did encounter news on platforms and sought to assess how credible the information might be, they often relied on cues for making quick, in-the-moment judgements, which were particularly important since many of these users rarely clicked through to the original sources of news. The mental shortcuts people discussed, summarised in Figure 1, involved (1) pre-existing ideas they held about news in general or specific news brands (where the information was coming from), but also several other factors: (2) social cues from family and friends (who shared or engaged with the news), (3) the tone and wording of headlines (whether or not it was perceived as clickbait), (4) the use of visuals (which they often saw as important evidence for what could or could not be trusted), and (5) the presence of advertising (whether or not information appeared to be sponsored). Additional (6) platform-specific cues also played a role in shaping judgements about what to trust. These involved design decisions around how information appears on platforms (e.g. what labels appear, what is given most prominence), which in turn affect many of these other cues." (Introduction and key findings, page 3)
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"This research study by the Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) was conducted to develop a foundation for understanding audiences' attitudes and behaviour around media trust in Bangladesh. In a complex environment that has undermined news media trust in Bangladesh, the study is me
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ant to benefit news outlets, news managers, media development professionals, the advertisement industry, and international development agencies with an active interest in media engagement in Bangladesh." (Comminit.com)
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"Drawing on an original dataset of survey responses collected in the summer of 2022 across four countries - Brazil, India, the UK, and the US - they examine the relationship between trust in news and how people think about news on digital platforms, especially Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, and YouTube
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, some of the most widely used platforms around the world. What they find is somewhat nuanced; how people think about information on platforms varies considerably. It depends on the platform, it depends on the country, it depends on the audiences within those countries, and it depends on the kinds of news those audiences are encountering in these varying spaces." (Executive Summary and Key Findings, page 3)
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"An international survey reveals that Internet users' trust on the Internet has dropped significantly since 2019. That is among the key findings of a 20-country Ipsos survey released by The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Only six in ten (63%) Internet users on average across the 20 countries sai
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d they trust the Internet. That is down 11 points since a similar survey was conducted in 2019. The singular exception is Japan, which showed a 7 percentage-point increase in trust. But Japan is the rare exception, as the findings reveal that Internet trust shrunk by double-digits in India (-10 points), Kenya (-11), Sweden (-10), Brazil (-18), Canada (-14), the United States (-12), and Poland (-26)." (Publisher description)
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"El CNTV necesita comprender en profundidad el vínculo emocional y significados atribuidos a la TV abierta desde la prespectiva de la confianza, identificando los atributos más relevantes que componen esta predisposición, para luego medirlos cuantitativamente. Para ésto Brinca ejecutó un estudi
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o exploratorio de diseño mixto (cualitativo y cuantitativo) basado en la ejecución de focus groups y una encuesta con audiencias pertenecientes a todo el territorio nacional. Este informe sistematiza los resultados de la fase cualitativa y cuantitativa del estudio y concluye que a nivel general existe un panorama de desconfianza hacia la TV abierta, el cual coexiste con una relevante predisposición a consumir sus contenidos. El informe finaliza con un modelo multivariable de este fenómeno, del cual se desprenden conjunto de recomendaciones accionables por parte de los canales de televisión abierta." (Resumen ejecutivo)
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"A wealth of interventions have been devised to reduce belief in fake news or the tendency to share such news. By contrast, interventions aimed at increasing trust in reliable news sources have received less attention. In this article, we show that, given the very limited prevalence of misinformatio
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n (including fake news), interventions aimed at reducing acceptance or spread of such news are bound to have very small effects on the overall quality of the information environment, especially compared to interventions aimed at increasing trust in reliable news sources. To make this argument, we simulate the effect that such interventions have on a global information score, which increases when people accept reliable information and decreases when people accept misinformation." (Abstract)
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"This situation report herein analyses media and information literacy (MIL), disinformation, and trust in news across the Caribbean. It contains country reports from eight researchers, covering eight Caribbean nations: the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Su
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riname, and Trinidad & Tobago. In each country, research was undertaken over a period of five months. The methods varied across the countries, and included surveys, desk research, and expert interviews. Separately, research was undertaken to determine the feasibility of a regional trusted news network." (Executive summary)
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"On the basis of an online survey conducted among young Chinese adults, this study examines how the association between media usage and political trust can be explained by three factors: the mediating roles of the perceived credibility of traditional and social media; the moderating roles of trust i
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n sources – media and non-media sources alike; and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) membership. Analyses support the idea that (1) the perceived credibility of political information obtained from traditional and social media is a significant mediator, and that (2) traditional media credibility has a stronger effect than social media credibility." (Abstract)
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"In the midst of heated debates surrounding the veracity and honesty of communication, scholarly attention has turned to the conceptualization of mis- and disinformation on the supply-side of (political) communication. Yet, we lack systematic research on the conceptualization of perceived mis- and d
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isinformation on the demand-side. Original survey data collected in ten European countries (N = 6,643) shows that news consumers distinguish general misinformation from disinformation. Yet, the high correlation between the two dimensions indicates that disinformation perceptions may be regarded as a sub-type of misinformation perceptions in which intentional deception is a core element. This paper aims to make a contribution to the misinformation and media credibility literature by proposing a first conceptualization of perceived untruthfulness corresponding to increasing levels of cynicism and skepticism toward the factual status and honesty of information." (Abstract)
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"Faced with a major crisis of confidence since the beginning of the 2010s, traditional media are multiplying initiatives to try to reconnect with their audience, even giving them a real role in the production of information." (Page 1)
"[...] Government and media fuel a cycle of distrust: Nearly one out of every two respondents view government and media as divisive forces in society—48% and 46%, respectively. Furthermore, government leaders and journalists are seen as the least trusted societal leaders today, with less than half
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of respondents trusting either (government leaders at 42% and journalists at 46%) [...] News sources fail to fix their Trust problem: None of the major information sources are trusted as a source of general news and information, with trust in search engines at 59%, followed by traditional media at 57%, owned media at 43% and social media at only 37% [...] Fake news concerns are at an all-time high: Concerns over fake news or false information being used as a weapon is now at an all-time high of 76%." (The Trust 10 at www.edelman.com)
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"Populist politicians increasingly accuse opposing media of spreading disinformation or “fake news.” However, empirical research on the effects of these accusations is scarce. This survey experiment (N = 1,330) shows that disinformation accusations reduce audience members’ trust in the accused
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news outlet and perceived accuracy of the news message, while trust in the accusing politician is largely unaffected. However, only individuals with strong populist attitudes generalize disinformation accusations to the media as an institution and reduce their general media trust. The phrase “fake news” does not amplify any of these effects. These findings suggest that politicians can undermine the credibility of journalism without much repercussion—a mechanism that might also threaten other authoritative information sources in democracies such as scientists and health authorities." (Abstract)
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"What are root causes of trust and distrust in media in different political contexts? How is media use shifted from one source to another with the change of political culture? What factors shape media perception across cultures and across political regimes? Are there commonalities or are they differ
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ent? Given the common instrumentalization of media in conflict environments and the growing ubiquity of political media capture, we may also ask, whether unfettered trust in media is normatively desirable under any circumstances. Put differently: Isn’t distrust a healthy response to propaganda and media manipulation? How is the concept of media literacy connected to trust or media scepticism? Do we need to be more sceptical rather than gullible? Against the backdrop of these (and other) questions, the Forum Media and Development (fome) dedicated its 2021 annual symposium to the question of trust in media, namely the question how media perception is shaped differently by different political contexts and media structures across the globe. Fome is the German platform for international media development initiatives (fome.info), a network that includes 24 organizations working towards strengthening free and independent media in developing and transitioning countries. The 2021 fome-symposium ran under the heading “Believe it or Not! Enquiries about TRUST in media (assistance)” and was organized by MiCT. The proceedings of the conference can be found online at https://fome.info/symposium-2021-documentation. Finally, this themed issue of the Global Media Journal – German Edition is curated as an extension of the conference and an effort to follow up upon some of the most pressing questions deriving from it." (Editorial)
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