Governments, the economy and civil society depend on the public’s trust to work effectively – but this trust is declining in an age of polarisation and misinformation. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that this “malady of mistrust” is as damaging as COVID or climate change.
We don’t talk much about trust – but we certainly notice when it breaks down, in corporate scandals or political coups. But in a time when many are losing faith in our most vital institutions, how can the bonds of trust be rebuilt?
In Time for Trust, Terry Flew will explore these themes with leading experts on trust, from academics and journalists to community leaders, both from Australia and around the world.
Professor Flew holds a prestigious Laureate Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. He’s particularly interested in “mediated trust” – that is, forms of trust and mistrust as they are expressed in and through the digital media technologies we use to make sense of the world.
From trust in news to trust in digital platforms, from trust in corporations and governments to trust in AI, “Time for Trust” will ask – who, and what, do we trust, have we lost that trust, and can we get it back? And are technologies bringing us together or driving us apart?
Join us for a fascinating journey through one of the most important issues facing people and societies everywhere. Because Billy Joel was right – it is a matter of trust.
Time for Trust is brought to you by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, and the Australian Research Council. It's produced by Dominic Knight, and recorded on unceded Gadigal Land.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Governments, the economy and civil society depend on the public’s trust to work effectively – but this trust is declining in an age of polarisation and misinformation. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that this “malady of mistrust” is as damaging as COVID or climate change.
We don’t talk much about trust – but we certainly notice when it breaks down, in corporate scandals or political coups. But in a time when many are losing faith in our most vital institutions, how can the bonds of trust be rebuilt?
In Time for Trust, Terry Flew will explore these themes with leading experts on trust, from academics and journalists to community leaders, both from Australia and around the world.
Professor Flew holds a prestigious Laureate Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. He’s particularly interested in “mediated trust” – that is, forms of trust and mistrust as they are expressed in and through the digital media technologies we use to make sense of the world.
From trust in news to trust in digital platforms, from trust in corporations and governments to trust in AI, “Time for Trust” will ask – who, and what, do we trust, have we lost that trust, and can we get it back? And are technologies bringing us together or driving us apart?
Join us for a fascinating journey through one of the most important issues facing people and societies everywhere. Because Billy Joel was right – it is a matter of trust.
Time for Trust is brought to you by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, and the Australian Research Council. It's produced by Dominic Knight, and recorded on unceded Gadigal Land.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.