The Trust Crisis

Though 1,179 respondents per country are not representative, the 2020 trust survey by big PR firm Edelman in 28 countries is covered broadly and again interesting in several ways.

The results are further evidence for the perceptible decline of trust, across politics, NGOs, business, media. An obvious interpretation is the pandemic and crises, and their impacts and handling, have had an effect in the form of (pessimistic) mood and (low) trust levels – but in fact the development started long before “Corona”.

It’s interesting that in Germany, and probably similarly in the germanophone area, business is less trusted than internationally, and the government gets best marks globally. This goes hand in hand with growing criticism of capitalism.

Distrust in media, important control and counter power, is tragic. The very low trust in social media shows people are reasonable there. It would be interesting to research the trust in PR 😉

I don’t share the (typical PR) conclusion business leaders ought to take a public stand on general problems. Strategically, that needs to be limited to the sphere of the specific business core where solutions can be contributed and trust built by responsible behaviour towards stakeholders – the only factor under own control.