Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

“Chat apps are hybrid media, with complex and shifting features. As a result, they pose challenges for reporters trying to develop trust with users.”

This past year has brought challenges for news organizations and journalists seeking trust with users online. The fragmentation of online discourse has allowed “for many more ‘truths’ to exist” in different online spaces. To explore these competing claims, journalists and news organization will need to develop trust with users in fragmented spaces.

Since their emergence in 2011, mobile chat applications (e.g., WhatsApp, WeChat, and Line) have gained massive user bases and given enterprising reporters challenges. Occupying a role between public and private communication, chat apps allows for small (e.g., Facebook Messenger or Telegram) or large-scale (e.g., WhatsApp and WeChat) interactions. Some of these apps are encrypted (e.g., Telegram or Signal), thus giving users greater confidence in the accuracy of these conversations, potentially safe from corporate or government surveillance.

Chat apps are hybrid media, with complex and shifting features. As a result, they pose challenges for reporters trying to develop trust with users. Amid the ephemeral content (e.g., such as with Snapchat) and rapid interaction on these apps, journalists will continue to seek to sustain interactions over time to establish confidence with sources.

For journalists, questions include: What are the important spaces? How can I get access? How can I maintain the confidence of key people in those spaces? For potential sources and users, questions include: Which news organizations are trustworthy? How do they understand the technology? What should be said online versus in person? While news organizations and journalists have made use of these apps, this coming year is going to continue to pose challenges for users and media workers searching to trust in those fragmented spaces.

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon is an assistant professor of journalism studies at the University of Minnesota.

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Errin Haines   At the ballot, it’s time to count black women

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Julia B. Chan   Looking for loyalty in all the right places

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Aron Pilhofer   We can’t leave the business to the business side any more

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Susie Banikarim   R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Paul Ford   Go global

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Jesse Holcomb   Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Eric Ulken   The year local publishers get smart(er) about change

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Sara M. Watson   Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Jake Levine   The return to now

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy   Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Helen Havlak   Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Tanzina Vega   It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Jim Moroney   Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Alan Soon   The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg   (Hint: It’s about your brand)

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Burt Herman   Things get real

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Dan Shanoff   You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging