Trust Falls: Authority, Credibility, Journalism, and the Internet |
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| Event | Interactive 2011 |
| Format | Dual |
| Organizer | Justin Peters – Columbia Journalism Review |
| Description | For decades, by deciding what stories were covered and how they were covered, newspapers set the boundaries of acceptable discourse in their communities. They reinforced normative community manners—and those communities allowed them to do so, with (for the most part) little complaint. For many reasons, readers are no longer as willing to let this happen. Rather, they are empowered as never before to define community manners and standards themselves—and to reject any heavy-handed efforts to influence those definitions. Now, more than ever, the news consumer doesn’t have to let a newspaper set the boundaries of discourse, or settle for a source that doesn’t reflect his or her attitudes. As Syracuse professor R. David Lankes writes, “There are simply more choices in whom to trust, and market forces have not come into play to limit choices. While this is true for virtually all media venues to some degree, the scale of choice on the internet make the internet particularly affected by shifts in authority.” This panel will address news outlets' attempts to deal with these shifts, and will offer several suggestions on how they should go about building and retaining their authority and credibility in the Internet age. |
| Questions Answered |
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| Level | Intermediate |
| Category | Journalism |
| Tags | Credibility, The Internet, trust |