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 ex-perience. 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 compli-cated 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.