People around the world do trust the media, but to varying degrees. According to TNS, the good news, for Internet content producers, is that people now trust the information they get from online news—roughly to the same degree as news from television and information from friends. On a global basis, the most trusted information source was friends, with 42% of those surveyed saying that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations. About an equal number trusted TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%).
This speaks well for the future of social media and user generated content. If people trust each other more than brands and third party sources for their information, then take advantage of that by giving people the tools they need to facilitate those conversations. Sure, there will be those that use those tools for spreading negative or unhappy commentary, but it is and will continue to be authentic which alone is often enough to break down the barriers of unhappy consumers.
Looking at all media on a global basis, there were variations in trust from country to country, but several patterns emerged. Internet users in the US and Canada held similar attitudes toward the media, with the largest differences in the US’s comparative lack of trust in newspapers and TV news.
Looking at Western Europe, UK Internet users were the least trusting of newspapers, while those in France, Italy and Spain put the least trust in TV news. Web users in France also held online news in the lowest esteem.
Internet users in Nordic countries were relatively trusting of online media, with around one-half the respondents from each country expressing their trust. Users in Denmark trusted it even more than word-of-mouth.
Throughout the Asia-Pacific region, online news ran close to TV news and newspapers in trustworthiness.
Wikipedia, despite being among the most highly visited Websites worldwide, was less trusted among the countries surveyed than industry magazines, industry Websites and product comparison sites.
Finally, private blogs were the least trusted source in almost every country. In China, however, where bloggers are sometimes jailed for what they write, 24% of Internet users said they trust them more than free papers and company brochures, though little else.
Around the world everyone trusts some of the media…some of the time.
Thanks eMarketer
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Articles of Interest
You have really compiled a gud post…
gud data for deigners and website developers…
thanks for the post
Daniel
smartappsportal.com
Maybe there is hope?