Paper Title: Identifying trust cues: how trust in science is mediated in content about science

Author(s) and Year: Justin T. Schröder , Janise Brück and Lars Guenther, 2025

Journal: Journal of Science Communication (open access [https://jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/JCOM_2401_2025_A06/])

TL;DR: The study identified different trust cues based on dimensions of trust in science (expertise, integrity, benevolence, transparency, dialogue) by analyzing different sources of science news media. 

Why I chose this paper: As someone learning science communication, I have always wondered why some sources seem more trustworthy to others even if they are spreading falsehoods. I think as researchers, we think that as long as the information is scientifically accurate in media communications, then that is enough. When I prepare to talk about science to a general audience, I often think to myself, “Why should they trust what I say?” It could be impostor syndrome, but I know that for some folks, simply stating that “because I am a scientist” is not enough. I think establishing trust is important, especially for people who have a negative image of scientists. 

Between television, social media apps, and online newspapers, we are flooded with information. Whether it is foreign policy, economics, advertisements, or science, it is too much to screen and check every bit of information we hear. The less familiar we are with a topic, the more we need to rely on trust in the information source. We start by looking for  “trust cues” from sources, such as a researcher with a specialized background in the topic, a prestigious institution, and the media source as a whole, and whether they have a record of providing correct information. 

Since many folks get their science information exclusively from digital media, it is important to understand how the media can encourage public trust in scientists. To continue scientific innovation for the public good, understanding public trust is more important than ever before. 

The Background

Despite how much we rely on trust in our daily lives, trust is difficult to define. In research, there is the subject of trust and the object of trust. For example, the subject of trust would be the public, and the object of trust would be science. There are also different levels (micro-, meso-, and macro-levels) for objects of trust. A micro-level object of trust would be the scientist. Meso-level would be the institution or scientific organization, while macro-level would be science as a system. However, this gets complicated when accounting for media. The media outlets act as an intermediary of trust, so audiences have to trust both the science and the media source. 

When someone interacts with media content, they have to evaluate whether to trust the content being presented. They start to look for indicators of trust or trust-evoking cues (“trust cues”). For science media, the media provides trust cues that tell the audience they can trust the science findings being presented. 

Little is known about how media and science interaction impacts public trust. The authors of this article wanted to understand how and what leads to trust in science media content. Specifically, they wanted to identify trust cues used in media coverage of science and how they connect to the dimensions of trust in science: expertise, integrity, benevolence, dialogue, and transparency. 

The Methods

The researchers gathered articles from a variety of German media sources. This included science news from television, print newspapers, online newspapers, science magazines, social media posts, non-mainstream media, and right-wing populist media from March 2022 and August 2022. Any video media was transcribed. In total, they analyzed 156 pieces of information. 

Each piece of information was checked to make sure that it had science as an object of trust and pertained to public trust in science. The researchers then looked for “trust cues.” These are cues to the audience that the source can be trusted. They looked for established dimensions of trust such as expertise, integrity, and benevolence, as well as dimensions recently introduced to the field, such as dialogue and transparency. They categorized the trust cues by dimension and the object of trust by level (micro-, meso-, and macro-levels).

Figure 1. This is an example of how the researchers identified trust cues in two different media sources. For both examples, they identified 4 trust cues and the object of trust. 

Alt text: Two separate paragraphs of text are highlighted with different colors to indicate trust cues and the object of trust. The trust cues are described with an arrow pointing to the highlighted text in their corresponding color. The top paragraph reads “’ By 2050, only two to three ski resorts are expected to be open in this country,’ predicts tourism researcher Professor Jürgen Schmude of LMU Munich, who has studied how badly climate change will affect German ski resorts. (Sueddeutsche Zeitung (print newspaper), 29.03.2022).” A grey arrow with a label saying “Trust cue 1: prediction” points to the highlighted grey portion, “’ By 2050, only two to three ski resorts are expected to be open in this country,’ predicts.” A label of “Trust cue 2: area of expertise” with a blue arrow points to “tourism researcher” and “who studied how badly climate change will affect German ski resorts”(highlighted in blue). A label of “Trust cue 3: academic degree” with a pink arrow points to “Professor” (highlighted in pink). A label of “Trust cue 4: affiliation to an institution” with a red arrow points to “of LMU Munich” (highlighted in red). A label of “Object of trust (micro-level, male)” with a dark red arrow points to “Jürgen Schmude” (highlighted in dark red).

 The bottom paragraph reads “[…] This is what researchers from the University of Birmingham found out. For the study, the data of 3818 men were observed over 12 years. ‘Anyone who notices changes in their dreams as they get older should see a doctor,’ explained Dr Abidemi Otaiku, author of the study.,(Bild.de (online tabloid), 16.05.2022.)”  A label of “Object of trust (meso-level) with a dark red arrow points to “researchers from the University of Birmingham” (highlighted in dark red). A label of “Trust cue 1: Description (and explanation) of research processes” with a blue arrow points to “For the study, the data of 3818 men were observed over 12 years” and this phrase  is highlighted in blue. A label of “Trust cue 2: recommendation for action” with a grey arrow points to “’ Anyone who notices changes in their dreams as they get older should see a doctor,’”(highlighted in grey). A label of “Trust cue 3: academic degree” with a pink arrow points to “Dr” highlighted in pink. A label of “Object of trust (micro-level, male)” with a red arrow points to “Abidemi Otaiku” highlighted in red. A label of “Trust cue 4: publication” with a blue arrow points to “author of the study.” (highlighted in blue). 

The Results

The researchers found trust cues that matched with all five dimensions of trust in the German media sources they analyzed. From their analysis, they identified how the media uses the five dimensions of trust.

Expertise

The first dimension was expertise. This refers to scientific information indicating the educational background, institution, and qualifications. An example would be a professor who states their education and works at a prestigious institution. 

Integrity

Integrity refers to independence, scientific quality assurance, and scientific standards and processes. This includes cues that clarify conflicts of interest and funding sources. For scientific quality assurances, the cues were statements of peer views, uncertainties, limitations, and whether the research is consistently being performed and there is continued research. Scientific standards and processes cues refer to how the research process is described. This includes describing collaborations between experts, publications, and how the work is performed. 

Benevolence

Benevolence refers to cues that show the ethical norms, social responsibility, and benefit for science. These cues indicated to the audience that the research was for the welfare of the public and the advancement of society. These also included science information that explained why the researchers do what they do. 

Transparency 

These cues refer to the accessibility of results and comprehensible language. Examples of transparency cues are whether the source had links to the study and whether or not the study was described in a way that the public could understand. 

Dialogue

Lastly, the Dialogue cues refer to how audience participation is involved. The researchers divided this cue into the subcategories of participation in public events, public engagement in research, and media presence. Examples include doing public lectures or citizen science projects.

Expertise, integrity, and benevolence occurred in the highest frequency in their samples (between 31.7, 39.2, and 25.1%, respectively). Transparency and Dialogue cues occurred less frequently (1.4 and 2.9% respectively). 

Impact

By carefully analyzing different sources of media, the researchers identified trust cues in science media within the established dimensions (expertise, integrity, and benevolence) and introduced dimensions (transparency and dialogue). Overall, the study shows that trust cues in science media can be categorized into dimensions of trust. This allowed these researchers to answer more questions about how media affects public trust in science. The authors of this paper have also recently published studies that quantified the frequency of these trust cues across different media sources and how exposure to these cues affects audience trust over time. 

My takeaway: I think this study is really useful for thinking about public trust in science. Though, I think it is important to consider that this was in German media so there could be differences between countries/cultures. Even though more work is needed to understand how folks evaluate these cues, I think it is a good framework to think about establishing trust in science information, especially for the dimensions of dialogue and transparency. 

Written by Julianna Goenaga

Edited by Alex Music and Sarah Ferguson

Featured image credit: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.