Abstract
This chapter explores the meaning of 'trust' and argues that the audience's trust in media must be conceptually re-considered. Drawing on a systematic understanding of how trust is constructed in various instances of the communication chain, and the philosophical and sociological debates on audiences' trust in journalism and informational media, we examine the exchange of trust between audiences and media outlets.
To do so, we argue that it is helpful to conceptualise audience-media relations on a scale with six levels, dealing with a relatively unconscious confidence in technology, institution and genre, and a more conscious investment of trust (or not) in content, journalists and amateur producers. The transformation of trust relations in Europe goes in the direction of greater reliance on personal trust-relations, while what might be called confidence-relations are becoming less prominent.
This change is in large part due to the increase in layperson participation in digital media of all sorts (Carpentier 2011).