The image of trust: Readers' views on the trustworthiness of news photographs

Abstract

After the digitalisation of the photographic process, an ample debate has revolved around one question: can people still trust in news photographs? To answer the question we first need to know what trust is and how it is conceptualised in the visual experience. Therefore, we conducted an empirical reception study in order to find out how people talk about the trust related to news photographs. We found that trust is a complicated and dynamic phenomenon, which is very hard to capture. With the aid of frame analysis, the study elicits four dimensions of trust: 1) Tacit trust is the general frame upon which people act in everyday life, also when watching news images; 2) Measured trust is activated when the viewer takes a conscious risk in that the news image is not representative of reality. Yet this is a trusting approach to the image; 3) Contextual trust is negotiation of trust, comparing different genres and contexts; 4) Finally, doubt comes to the fore when the viewer openly questions the veracity or the purpose of the image, whether it is manipulated or selected in order to persuade the viewer for a certain cause. The study shows that readers' trust is a multidimensional process, yet the frame of tacit trust is the most common among interviewees. Trust in the case of news images can be expanded to reflect audiences' trust in media at large.

The Trust Gap: Young People's Tactics for Assessing the Reliability of Political News

“…The tactic most explicitly drawing on tacit knowledge is relying on one's gut feeling. Our results confirm previous findings by Puustinen and Seppänen (2013) that trust in news has not only a cognitive, but also an intuitive dimension. In the second card-sorting exercise, participants were asked to sort various sources for political news based on their perceived reliability.…”

“…Therefore, users may rely on heuristics or shortcuts to make decisions about reliability (Metzger and Flanagin 2013) or even assess news completely intuitively. For example, in their study on how people determine the reliability of news photography, Puustinen and Seppänen (2013) found that viewers deemed pictures trustworthy based on an intuitive sense of authenticity. Trust, as Coleman et al (2009) and others have argued, goes beyond the accuracy of facts: it also encompasses the confidence that news media will meet public expectations around news, including more affective assessments of feeling represented in news coverage, that news outlets operate based on genuine motives and journalism does reflect social reality and audiences' everyday experiences (see also Coleman 2012; Metzger and Flanagin 2013; Schmidt et al 2019).…”

Visual disinformation in a digital age: A literature synthesis and research agenda

“…Sophisticated manipulations of still images, also called ‘composition’ or ‘doctoring’ (Hameleers et al, 2020; Kasra et al, 2018), have been possible since the emergence of photoshop in the 1990s. Back then, they have caused similar concerns about their meaning for the credibility of photographs (Giotta, 2020; Puustinen and Seppänen, 2013). Recent examples are images of natural disasters, such as the Australian bushfire crisis in 2019 (Thomson et al, 2022), where image composition was used to make the disaster scenes look even more dramatic by photoshopping a burning fire in the background of a normal-looking landscape.…”

“…Second, because they are generally perceived as more credible (Sundar, 2008), and due to their emotionality (Hannah, 2021; Powell et al, 2015), they might have stronger and longer-lasting effects on citizen’s behaviour and attitudes. This means that they can lead to durable misperceptions and increase engagement on social media but also contribute to the erosion of trust in media, politicians and visuals in general (Diakopoulos and Johnson, 2021; Murphy and Flynn, 2022; Puustinen and Seppänen, 2013).…”

Amatöörikuvien läheisyys kriisiuutisissa toimittajien ja yleisön tulkitsemina

“…2011;Puustinen & Seppänen 2011;Andén-Papadopoulos & Pantti 2013). Tässä artikkelissa keskitymme kriisi-ja onnettomuusuutisten yhteydessä käytettäviin "koviin" amatööriuutiskuviin, jotka ovat journalistien keskuudessa halutuimpia yleisöaineistoja (Pantti & Bakker 2009;Allan 2014).…”