Afleveringen
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Communication is a two-way street. Or at least, it’s meant to be. So why don’t organisations ever seem to really listen to us?
Jim Macnamara, the Distinguished Professor of Public Communication at the University of Technology Sydney, is a pioneer in the field of organisation listening, and he argues it’s the critical missing piece for nearly every institution trying to build and maintain trust. He explains why it’s so beneficial, and why so many organisations don’t do it even if it’s so effective. He also outlines how two-way communication has and will continue to change as digital technologies transform the way we talk to each other.
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Why are companies racing to build dancing robots when human dancers are fighting harder than ever to earn a living? Why does it feel like technology is becoming rapidly more powerful, but so few people seem to actually gain anything from it?
Institutions large and small are central to all democracies, and they’re anything but simple. A great institution can protect and increase knowledge across generations, but the very thing that keeps them alive can also make them stagnant.
Sir Geoff Mulgan knows institutions better than almost anyone. He’s Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London, and from 2011 to 2019 he was Chief Executive at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. He explains why our biggest and most important institutions so often seem averse to innovation, and outlines how groups of people can be more (and sometimes less) than the sum of their parts.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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As governments around the world move to restrict young people’s access to social media, a fundamental question emerges: do bans actually protect children or create new risks?
Growing concern about youth mental health and the power of tech companies has driven policies such as Australia’s under-16 ban, which is now being closely watched around the world.
But the evidence remains contested. Sonia Livingstone, Director of Digital Futures for Children, argues there are limits to the ban approach. She suggests we rethink how digital environments are designed and governed so they are safer for young people.
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“Podcasting is the medium of the moment.”
But should we trust the creators and their content?
With more than 600 million global listeners, podcasting is now central to journalism, commentary, and public debate. Many audiences see podcasts as more authentic and more intimate than radio, television, or social media — but why?
When anyone can publish an episode, who deserves our trust? And how do we know when that trust is misplaced?
Broadcaster and academic Dominic Knight – co-founder of The Chaser – shares his thoughts on trust, credibility, and misinformation in the podcast era.
Hear more from Dominic Knight on his podcast The Chaser Report.
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Is cinema a vehicle of truth or does it promote false beliefs?
Associate Professor of Film Studies Bruce Isaacs doesn’t believe in historical truth in the film image.
“I don't think cinema looks for that. What it seeks to show is a kind of aesthetic truth. Films straddle this very interesting tension between being truthful to history and yet in some way intensifying that experience.”
Hollywood has a long and complicated relationship with trust, ideology, and reality. A relationship that has only intensified as the Trump administration polarises America and the world.
Professor Isaacs explores whether film is corrosive of trust, why movies are such fertile ground for conspiracies, and the political anxieties driving recent Hollywood films like Civil War, Eddington, and One Battle After Another.
Hear more from Professor Isaacs on his podcast Film Versus Film.
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Dr T.J. Thomson is an associate professor and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at RMIT, where he co-leads The News, Technology, and Society Network. His research is united by its focus on visual communication. He’s the author of a number of books and edited colllections, including Everyday Visual News: Audience Expectations, Engagements, and Meanings (Routledge, 2026), The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism (2025), and To See and Be Seen: The Environments, Interactions, and Identities Behind News Images (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
He joins Terry to explore the evolution of visual journalism—from the days of specialist photojournalists to today’s multi-skilled reporters—and the growing role of generative AI in shaping news imagery, along with its impacts on trust, authenticity, and ethics in journalism.
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Karin Wahl-Jorgenson is Professor, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University where she has also been University Dean of Research Environment and Culture. She is the incoming President-Elect of the International Communication Association.
Her research has been focused on the relationship between citizenship, media and emotion - and how it is affected by rapid technological change and innovation. She has recently been working on the experiences of local news entrepreneurs, and is currently developing a new research project on “boutique media”, including the appeal of news influencers, podcasters and Substack newsletters.
She has written five books; Emotions, Media and Politics (Polity Press, 2019), Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (Polity Press, 2019, co-authored with Arne Hintz and Lina Dencik), Disasters and the Media (Peter Lang, 2012; co-authored with Mervi Pantti and Simon Cottle), Journalists and the Public (Hampton Press, 2007) and Citizens or Consumers? (Open University Press, 2005; co-authored with Justin Lewis and Sanna Inthorn).
She joined Terry on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia where she was the keynote speaker at the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communications Association conference.
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Professor Andrea Carson joins Terry for a wide-ranging discussion about trust in politics and the media which reports on it, from mis- and dis-information to the fate of fact-checking units and how our front pages impact Australian elections, along with the impact of AI and social media on our rapidly changing mediascape.
She is Associate Dean, Research, Industry and Engagement with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and a Professor of Political Communication at La Trobe University, specializing in the news media’s role in politics and quality of information in the public sphere.
In 2024, she was a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, where she studied public trust in electoral bodies during elections, especially in the context of disinformation.
More broadly, her research examines media trust, political communication, gender politics, and regulating digital platforms. She has worked on comparing different regulatory approaches to handling misinformation and disinformation. She has authored and co-edited several important books, including Investigative Journalism, Democracy and the Digital Age (2020) and Undercover Reporting, Deception, and Betrayal in Journalism (2023).
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In recent years, an increasing amount of cultural production has transitioned to platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. But can we trust these platforms to do the right thing by their creators and users – and what happens when these companies come into conflict with national governments, as has happened in Australia, Canada and elsewhere?
David B. Nieborg is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto. He is a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a Faculty Affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute. He held fellowships with the Jackman Humanities Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His previous affiliations include MIT, the Queensland University of Technology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Utrecht University, and the University of Amsterdam. David published on the game industry, app and platform economics, and game journalism in academic outlets such as New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Internet Policy Review, and Media, Culture and Society.
He is the co-author of Platforms and Cultural Production (Polity, 2021), which is translated in Italian and Chinese, and Mainstreaming and Game Journalism (MIT Press, 2023). His teaching and research interests include social media, platforms, globalization, the media industries, games, cultural production and journalism.
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On Wednesday 20 August 2025, Prof Terry Flew delivered a guest lecture in Charles Sturt University's 'Thoughts On The Beyond' series, celebrating 50 years of communications scholarship at the university. Entitled 'AI and Communication: Trust, Ethics, Justice and Policy', the talk outlines some of context for, and themes of, the work Terry is doing as part of his ARC Laureate project researching mediated trust, with a particular focus on the significant impacts of AI.
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Alexandre Lefebvre, Professor of Politics and Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, argues that liberalism isn't just a political ideology having to do with individual rights, parliaments, and courts. He says its core values permeate throughout much of our society, and offer a personal belief system that’s fundamental to many of us, whether religious or otherwise.
Yet, at a time of increased populism and authoritarianism, these fundamental values – and the social trust that is built on them – are facing fresh challenges.
Alexandre joins Terry to discuss these issues, which feature in his recent book, Liberalism as a Way of Life.
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Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. As a sociologist of media and culture, he approaches media and communications from the perspective of the symbolic power that has been historically concentrated in media institutions. He is interested in how media and communications institutions and infrastructures contribute to various types of order – social, political, cultural, economic, and ethical..
In the past 10 years, his work has increasingly focussed on data questions, and ethics, politics and deep social implications of Big Data and small data practices. He is the author or editor of 17 books and many journal articles and book chapters.
He has recently co-founded the Tierra Comun tri-lingual website (Englosh, Spanish and Portugese) to encourage networking with and among Latin American scholars and activists interested in data colonialism.
Nick Couldry’s most recent book is The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What if it Can’t? It is the first of a three-book series titled Humanising the Future.
We are at the International Communications Association’s 75th annual conference in Denver, Colorado, where we will discuss his most recent work.
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In recent years, many major companies, both in Australia and around the world, have conspicuously failed to protect their customers’ data, leading to personal details being shared on the dark web. Global platform companies have facilitated the spread of disinformation and misinformation, while their algorithms have contributed to the fragmentation and polarisation of society.
But governments in some parts of the world have sought to force these companies to lift their game, imposing more rigorous standards that mandate the protection of privacy and user data. In Australia, the government has passed new laws including the creation of a tort for serious invasions of privacy and expanding the investigative and enforcement powers of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Lizzie O’Shea is the founder and chair of Digital Rights Watch, an Australian non-government organisation which advocates for human rights protections in the digital world. Digital Rights Watch focuses on issues such as privacy, security, data rights, access to data and technology, and the role of journalism in holding technology companies to account.
She also sits on the board of Blueprint for Free Speech and the Alliance for Gambling Reform. She’s a past recipient of the Davis Projects for Peace Prize and has been named a Human Rights Hero by Access Now. He 2019 book Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.
Lizzie is also a regular panellist on the Burning Platforms podcast alongside Peter Lewis who appeared on our first episode.
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The 25th anniversary edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that Australia has slipped into distrust territory with a profound global shift to acceptance of aggressive action and deepening fears giving rise to a widespread sense of grievance.
We were delighted to co-host the launch of the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer on 18 March. In collaboration with Edelman Australia and the Centre for AI, Trust and Governance, we brought together around 160 people at The Sybil Centre at the University of Sydney.
This episode contains the panel discussion from the launch, facilitated by media commentator Tim Burrowes. Terry was joined on the panel by Kim Portrate, Milly Bannister and Jared Mondschein. This followed Terry's opening keynote address and a speech by Tom Robinson, CEO of Edelman Australia, that provided detailed analysis and insights from the Australian report – a separate conversation between Tom and Terry can be found in our previous episode.
We highly recommend you download the report and find out more about the state of societal trust in Australia, and how it may impact your industry.
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As we’ve discussed extensively on the podcast, trust in public institutions is declining. But how do we know this, and how do we measure how much things have changed? The international communications firm Edelman has been tracking this issue for 25 years, and its Edelman Trust Barometer has become one of the most authoritative global sources on trust in society. This year, their study has found that that globally, there has been what they term a profound shift to acceptance of aggressive action, with increased polarisation, deepening fears, and a widespread sense of grievance.
The 2025 version of the Edelman Trust Barometer was released a few weeks ago, and the CEO of Edelman Australia, Tom Robinson, joins Terry to explore its findings in detail. Before joining Edelman, Tom spent more than a decade at MediaCom, working with high-profile brands on their marketing and content strategies. He also has extensive experience with digital media.
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As AI continues to make its way into more aspect of life, some interesting trends about how the public feels about these new, increasingly pervasive services have been observed. The developers of AI promise that their systems will produce reliable, comprehensive, and bias-free results. But national surveys consistently show that the public is sceptical towards AI. And yet experimental studies show that in practice, people do trust AI more than one might suspect.
Can increasing AI literacy help to overcome this deficit, and teach us what to trust when it comes to AI, and where we’re right to be cautious? And if so, how should literacy initiatives balance goals to learn how AI works in practice, and how AI could or should work in the future?
Today’s guest, Dr Heather Ford, has been thinking extensively about these issues. She’s an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communications at UTS. She is the Coordinator of the UTS Data and AI Ethics Cluster, Affiliate of the UTS Data Science Institute, and Associate of the UTS Centre for Media Transition. She was appointed to the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) in 2023.
Heather Ford is currently conducting research funded by the Australian Research Council and the Wikimedia Foundation on Wikipedia bias, question and answering technologies, digital literacy and the impact of generative AI on our information environment. Previously she has worked for global technology corporations and non-profits in the US, UK, South Africa and Kenya. Her research focuses on the social implications of media technologies and the ways in which they might be better designed to prevent misinformation, social exclusion, and harms as a result of algorithmic bias.
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We have a lot of threats to trust around the world. These include misinformation, political polarisation, the spread of hate online, and declining trust in political and social institutions. We also know that much of this has happened as more and more people worldwide have developed social media profiles and engaged with other online. But what, if anything, is the connection between the two? Should we be developing new measures for digital trust, or do the problems lie elsewhere, whether in the failure of governments to adequately deliver to their citizens, growing economic inequalities, or anxieties about cultural change? And how could critical, competent citizens who understand these problems contribute to redressing them?
Jörg Matthes is Professor of Communication Science at the University of Vienna and directs the Advertising and Media Psychology Research Group. His research spans digital media effects, advertising, sustainability communication, and empirical methods, with over 200 journal articles and numerous awards from major academic associations. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of Communication Theory and Communication Methods & Measures, both globally top-ranked journals in the field. As Chair of the Department of Communication (2014–2022), he led it to the University of Vienna to be one of the top universities in Europe and the world. He is a European Research Council Advanced Grant recipient, and also advises on academic quality assessments worldwide.
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One of the major challenges of our time is political polarisation and the dangers it presents to social cohesion. Recent editions of the Edelman Trust Barometer have identified a weakening of Australia’s social fabric, a decline of trust in key institutions, and a lack of unity behind a shared purpose.
Professor James Arvanitakis has addressed these questions at several points across his career, especially through his research in the United States, and his work on finding ways to disagree respectfully which evolved from this experience. In this episode, he explains why he thought Donald Trump would win the 2024 US election, why so many people no longer trust experts and scientific research, and how universities can evolve their mission to respond to this new environment.
Currently, James is director of the Forrest Research Foundation, which partners with Western Australia’s five universities and is based at the University of Western Australia. He is a Fulbright alumnus, having spent 12 months at the University of Wyoming as the Milward L Simpson Fellow. In 2021, he was appointed the inaugural Patron of Diversity Arts Australia in recognition of his commitment to a cultural sector that reflects the rich diversity of Australia. In 2022 he founded Respectful Disagreements, a brave spaces project that promotes the lost art of civility in political disagreement as well as the educational power of discomfort.
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Only 50% of Australians trust our governments, according to the Edelman Trust barometer from March this year. And even fewer of us trust the media – just 40%. Furthermore, 59% of Australian worry that government, business leaders, journalists & reporters are deliberately trying to mislead people. And in a time of rapid change, none of these four institutions is trusted to integrate innovation into society. Clearly, our institutions have much to do if they’re going to rebuild this trust, and take society with them.
Today’s guest,Tom Burton, has spent his career across all four of the institutions that Edelman surveys – primarily the media, where he held senior editorial and publishing roles with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Mandarin. He was Canberra bureau chief for The Australian Financial Review, and until recently, served as that newspaper’s government editor, and also worked as a ministerial adviser and for the Australian Media and Communications Authority, as well as a US NGO, the Centre for American Progress.
Tom Burton argues that by focusing on delivery and embracing digital transformation, governments across the political spectrum can become highly effective and be perceived as such. But in order to achieve this, government, the media and academia will all need to lift their game.
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For some years now, local newspapers have been closing down in the United States. The problem’s especially pronounced in regional areas, where ‘news deserts’ have emerged as the last local journalists shut up shop.
More recently, hundreds of new websites that claim to contain local news have arrived to try to fill this void. On examination, many turn out to be full of what’s become known as ‘pink slime’ – poor quality news that often contain misinformation or is overtly partisan.
So, what exactly is being lost in an age of many more publishers, but far fewer ethical journalists? And what can be done about it? Should US regulators crack down on content that might be more accurately categorised as campaign material?
Today’s guest, Philip Napoli, explored these questions in a lecture at the University of Sydney on the 19th of June, ahead of the International Communications Association conference on the Gold Coast. His answers have major implications for public trust, and democracy.
Philip Napoli is James R. Shepley Distinguished Professor of Public Policy in Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He’s Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy. His research focuses on media institutions, regulation and policy, and he’s collaborating on the University of Sydney’s Australian Research Council-funded project Valuing News: Aligning Individual, Institutional and Societal Perspectives.
Professor Napoli’s books include 2001’s Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media; 2003’s Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace; 2011’s Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences; and 2019’s Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age.
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