This CBC article addresses an interesting aspect of trust and media. It argues that people’s opinion of the reliability of a medium depends on the reliability of technology this medium is connected to. In order to provide the audience with useful information, the media is in the constant process of collecting information on audience response (thus participating in the cycle of discourse). The makers of the media are interested to know what movies we like, how often we watch television, whether or not we mute our radios when a commercial is on etc. However, the audience is at times reluctant to provide this information to the interested parties. The people want to understand who has access to information about them, who can buy it and what they can use it for. Because of this, complex security systems have been developed to safeguard banks of information about the viewers, listeners and users of media. These systems are used to assure the audience that their information is safe and secure.
Technology can thus influence trust, and trust can in turn influence customer preference. For example, if I as a user hear that my personal information is being used and sold by Facebook I will immediately cancel my profile and transfer to MySpace, an internet social space which provides similar services but promises greater security. In his account of trust, Silverstone concentrated on the trust we must feel for the media when it provides us with a message. This trust is based on the content of the message itself. However, the trust we feel when we are the ones who discloses information is different: we must trust the recipient for different reasons.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/privacy/measures.html
