Thanks to Judy Gombita for the link to a Canadian study into which types of media are most trusted (reported here, full results here).
The study showed that credibility of “new” media rated significantly lower than “old” media – something that I regularly have to remind myself when I get a bit over-enthusiastic about the social media ecosystem that I personally enjoy participating in.
Award for sensible quote of the day goes to Apex president, Pat McNamara:
“It’s no secret that there are more information options than ever before, but what we’ve learned with this study is how and why consumers are making certain choices…if we want to communicate with the public, we need to understand where they get their information and how they are making decisions…we can’t abandon traditional media. But we also need to understand that it’s becoming increasingly vital to talk to audiences through multiple channels.”
Who audiences trust for information is the result of a complex thought process involving more than just channel of delivery – factors including audience age, consumption history, “relationships” with individual authors and political outlook are also important when individuals make their sub-conscious assessment of how much importance they place on a particular communication.
But it’s useful all the same to try to isolate the trust that different channels can contribute to the overall trust placed in an information source.
The important factor here could well be that with “old” media I think there’s trust in the channel – people trust their usual newspaper – whereas, taking blogging as an example of “new” media, people don’t trust blogs per se, as there are thousands of blogs they are exposed to, but they trust bloggers instead. And this trust takes time to build up, just like it would in a face to face friendship.
[tags]trust, statistics, old+media, new+media[/tags]