Reviews

Vian Bakir and David M. Barlow (eds.) (2007) Communication in the Age of Suspicion: Trust and the Media

Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-00254-8. 244 + xv pages. £50 hardback.

As I write, in mid-July 2007, the trustworthiness of the British Broadcasting Corporation is undergoing intense scrutiny following a series of revelations about misleading claims made in and about some of its recent television programming. In such a context it might be tempting to endorse the thrust of this edited book - that we are faced with a widespread climate of distrust when it comes to media communications. It is nevertheless unclear to me that exploring the relationship between trust and the media - which is obviously an intellectually worthy project - should require that we accept that a systematic epochal shift has taken place. So I bring to my reading of the book serious suspicions about that central thesis, and certainly the referential adequacy of the title.

In total the book consists of seventeen short chapters dealing with a range of topics connected to trust and the media. The collection begins with two chapters by the editors. The first is extremely short (six pages) and introduces the book's central theme, gives a very brief overview to its structure, and argues for the contemporary reality of distrust and suspicion. The second, of more conventional length, sketches the outline of a wider 'field' called 'trust studies' and argues for the contribution that analyses of the media can make to this area. Indeed, an explicitly stated aim of the book is that it: 'opens up a new field of media studies within trust studies' (p.22). My initial suspicions aside, the case for an epochal 'age of suspicion' is not made convincingly in these introductory chapters. While this is not detrimental to the various analyses that follow, it somewhat undermines the book's cohesion. The relationship between each chapter and the stated overall aim of the book is not always completely clear - other than their role in broadly exemplifying the sorts of things that media studies within trust studies might pursue.

After these two chapters, the book's main body is split into two sections, which are followed by a conclusion from the editors. The first of these sections contains eight chapters concerned with the alleged 'erosion' of trust, which tends to be viewed as highly problematic. The topics covered include the following impressive range: the way in which propaganda in World War One established a legacy of distrust regarding all official pronouncements in the US and UK (Michael Redley); the media management strategies of the Howard government in Australia (Jeff Archer); the virtual elimination of 'localism' in Welsh Independent Local Radio due to structural changes (David Barlow); the prevalent 'models' available for understanding 'terrorism' present in the British press (Barry Richards); the relationship between 'service journalism' trust and food scares (Jeremy Collins); the British Daily Mail's treatment of the controversy over MMR jabs between 1998 and 2003 (Chas Critcher); a case study of the selling of 'minority interest' music over the internet (Gillian Allard); and the relationship between technology, trust, accountability, and 'dataveillance' (Andrew McStay).

The second section consists of six chapters focused, more or less, on the opposite process - the 'building' of trust. Again, there is variety on show, including: discussion of the relationship between rhetoric and trust in controversies between Greenpeace and Royal Dutch Shell (Vian Bakir); the role of public trust and the media in the Post-communist transition of Estonia (Kaja Tampere); the status of claims-makers in Australian debates over medical indemnity policy (Amisha Mehta); Oprah Winfrey's management of her celebrity and authenticity through practices of confession (Sherryl Wilson); the significance of user participation in fostering trust in interactive media such as Big Brother and Indymedia (Janet Jones); and the possibilities afforded by digital media with respect to manipulation, authenticity and surveillance (Gary Gumpert and Susan J. Drucker).

There are particular chapters that stand out for me in terms of the depth of their analysis despite the obvious limitations of space. Specifically, Barry Richards argues quite persuasively that there is a very limited range of models used in constructing reports of 'terrorist' activity, which tends to skew our understandings of the causes and consequences of approaches to the phenomenon, something of undoubted contemporary significance. Meanwhile, one of the editors Vian Bakir demonstrates the value of Aristotle's notion of ethos - the pursuit of persuasion through stance and moral character - by examining, in exemplary fashion, the competing credibility claims of Greenpeace and Royal Dutch Shell. Also, Sherryl Wilson's account of Oprah Winfrey's claims to ordinariness and her reduction of the 'otherness of others' allows some insight into what we might choose to call the rhetoric of trust, which definitely merits further exploration in similar contexts - how do particular individuals acquire and retain a status as trustworthy for particular constituencies? The text has certainly been very useful for me as a route into the work of each of these three authors.

The editors' concluding chapter makes some important points about the study of the media more generally. These include the tendency towards over-representation of news and the press as media forms undergoing systematic analysis, and the desirability for future research to attend closely to the 'media literacy' of the audience. They also identify the need for a more clearly theorised conception of trust in future work in this area.

Unless a potential reader is interested in the specific topic of the relationship between trust and the media (and politics), then the book in its entirety is unlikely to be of interest. Nevertheless, it is certainly a storehouse of interesting routes into a wide array of topics, and there is enough variety for there to be something appealing to anyone with an interest in some aspect of contemporary media, even if they are, like me, highly sceptical about the epochal shift implied by the book's title.

Joseph Burridge, University of Sheffield.