4.0 The Measuring Trustworthiness of Media Episode (Part One: Propaganda and Journalism's Trust Assumptions)

TRUST CONTROL: Trust is no longer a feeling.

4.0 The Measuring Trustworthiness of Media Episode (Part One: Propaganda and Journalism's Trust Assumptions)

During World War II, the time Carl I. Hovland spent evaluating the effects of U.S. propaganda films on U.S. Army recruits inspired his research measuring information and communication trustworthiness and helped propel the field. Since that time, people have designed all sorts of methods and models in attempts to gauge trustworthiness of media and information. This is the first part of a two-part episode exploring measurement of trustworthiness of media, information, communication, news and even art.

In this episode: 
 U.S. Army propaganda films and analysis of "the sleeper effect" on perception of information source trustworthiness Early Cold War inspired U.S. military industrial complex and Rockefeller Foundation funding of trust measurement amid the Red Scare and McCarthyism Models and methods for scoring and even color-coding trustworthiness of information and news The historical links between "measuring" the aesthetic value of music and art and measuring media trustworthiness Why some trustworthiness measurement methods may not cure news journalism's low trust problem



People Featured in this Episode:

Kate Kaye, Trust Control creator and narrator Tosan Atele-Williams, Academic Associate in the Faculty of Business and IT and Computational Trust Researcher at Ontario Tech University Lynn Walsh, Journalist, Assistant Director of Trusting News, Chairwoman of the Society of Professional Journalists' Ethics Committee Matt Skibinski, Newsguard Chief Operating Officer

Key References (Mostly) in Order of Appearance

PART ONE

Why We Fight: The Battle of Britain U.S. National Archives 1943 Experiments on Mass Communication by Carl I. Hovland, et al. Princeton University Press 1949

The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness by Carl I. Hovland and Walter Weiss The Public Opinion Quarterly Winter, 1951-1952

The Measurement of Trust in Communication Research Part 1 by Paola Pascual-Ferrá Communication Research Trends Wikipedia models of trust workshop paper Investigations into Trust for Collaborative Information Repositories: A Wikipedia Case Study by Deborah L. McGuinness, et al Models of Trust for the Web (MTW'06) 2006

PART TWO

Information Trust Model by Tosan Atele-Williams and Stephen Marsh Cognitive Systems Research 2023

Towards a Computational Model of Information Trust by Tosan Atele-Williams and Stephen Marsh Trust Management XII International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Advances in Information and Communication Technology (see p. 124) 2018

infoDNA (Version 2) - Agent Enhanced Trustworthy Distributed Information by Stephen Marsh 2004

Aesthetic Measure by George D. Birkhoff 1933

NewsGuard Website Rating Process and Criteria

Trust Control Credits Trust Control was researched, written, edited and produced by Kate Kaye. All interviews with sources featured in Trust Control were conducted by Kate unless otherwise noted.

Fake ads and silly satire was voiced by Kate Kaye and/or Kyle Huth

Music The tunes featured throughout Trust Control were written by D. Rives Curtright and performed by the band Epic Strange from Trust Control's home of Portland, Oregon: D. Rives Curtright: guitar, baritone sax, percussion and drum machine Charlie Gotgart: bass Steven Francisco: midi keys Octavio Dowling: keys Dave Coniglio: drums and vibraphone Mike McGovern: bass on Decimation Hear the full Epic Strange album, Nouveau Electric Mess, on Soundcloud. Hear music from D. Rives Curtright on Spotify.

The work that went into Trust Control was done in Kate Kaye's personal time and was supported by Oregon State University's Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts fellowship on Trust in the Age of Generative AI and Oregon Humanities.