New York, NY. Recently revealed results from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, for the first time ever, showcase the media viewed as the least trusted source for information. In the survey, media fell below 50% trust in 22 of the 28 countries surveyed.
Here are some of the highlights of the survey:
- Platforms are the main driver of untrusted resources
- 63% of those surveyed do not know how to tell good journalism from fake
- 59% could not tell where the source of the story originated
- 70% were worried the fake news would be used as a weapon
“We’re at a point of global awareness of the notion of disinformation and questioning the nature of truth: respondents told us they do not know what to believe, impacting trust across the board.” – Ben Boyd; President of Intellectual Property, Edelman
One other data point that caught our eye – 42% of those surveyed said they no longer know which brands to trust.
You can read more about these highlights as well as several others here, as reported by The Holmes Report.
Why This Matters –
One of the trends we’re following in 2018 is called ‘100 Percent Skepticism’. We noted that ‘the prevalence and sophistication of fake news seems insurmountable. The political, economic and social incentives to produce that click bait are great and largely free of consequence. BUT, a counter-response is forming from an unlikely source that may destroy the fake news industry by starving it of revenue.’
That unlikely source: brands turning away from these large platforms and demanding they ‘clean up their act’, so to speak, or we are taking our media dollars elsewhere. This has forced the likes of Facebook and other popular platforms to start to put resources behind making sure the information they’re populating is coming from reliable sources.
It will be very interesting to watch this trend evolve in 2018 and how brands will continue to keep platforms honest. Read this trend and 74 others in our annual trend reports showing how shifts in expectations are shaping consumers inside and outside of healthcare.
