Mediating trust in content about science: assessing trust cues in digital media environments

Intermediaries such as (digital) media employ trust cues, i.e., linguistic markers used in their content that allow public audiences to assess reasons for trusting scientists, scientific organizations, and the science system. Trust cues refer to dimensions of trust in science such as expertise, integrity, benevolence, transparency, and dialogue. Digital media environments are expected to be heterogeneous in content, source of trust cues, objects of trust in science, and the gender of the scientists referred to. Therefore, their impact on public trust in science might vary. Thus, this quantitative content analysis identified trust cues across several sources of scientific information (n = 906) and explored their heterogeneity in digital media environments. The results reveal that journalism is potentially the most important source for trust cues and scientists are most often referred to—with female scientists being underrepresented. Differences across (digital) media might have varying impacts on public trust in science.