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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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So what exactly is populism, and how valid are the concerns of those who see it as a threat to democracy itself?

Today’s guest, Benjamin Moffitt, is Associate Professor of Politics and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the National School of Arts and Humanities at ACU (Melbourne). He describes his research as located at the intersection of comparative politics, contemporary political theory and political communications, and focusing on contemporary populism across the globe.

Benjamin is the author of three books on populism: 'Populism' (Polity, 2020), 'Political Meritocracy and Populism: Curse or Cure?' (with Mark Chou & Octavia Bryant, Routledge, 2020), and 'The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation' (Stanford University Press, 2016). He’s also the editor of ‘Populism in Global Perspective: A Performative and Discursive Approach’ (with Pierre Ostiguy and Francisco Panizza). 

In recent times, Benjamin has been researching how populists use visual media, and how visual media covers populist leaders, for an Australian Research Council-funded project called 'The Visual Politics of Populism'. 

He has also been examining how democracy can be defended in times of political discontent and democratic instability, focusing on the role of social integration and welfare.

The photos of Donald Trump with 300 burgers discussed in this episode can be seen here.

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Today’s guest, Siva Vaidhyanathan, has written extensively about the shortcomings of the platform companies that are such a major part of modern life. He’s the Robertson Professor of Media Studies, and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship, at the University of Virginia.

His books include Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011), The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004), along with several books about intellectual property. He is currently writing about Elon Musk.

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These are just a few topics connected to mediated trust that Professor Julianne Schultz AM has recently covered in her influential fortnightly column for The Guardian. She has had an exceptionally eminent and diverse career as a media practitioner, executive, board member, and most recently, academic at Griffith University. Julianne was the publisher and founding editor of the Griffith Review from 2003 to 2021, and is now Professor Emerita, Media and Culture at Griffith.

Among her many senior roles in industry, Julianne was the chair of The Conversation Media Group, and its editorial advisory board before that. She was also chair at the Australian Film TV and Radio School, and has served on the boards of the Copyright Agency, Grattan Institute and Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, where she formerly headed strategy and communications. Earlier in her career, she was a journalist for the Australian Financial Review and Courier-Mail.

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Peter brings a long and varied career of engagement with issues relating to trust. In this episode, he also considers whether our attitudes to digital platforms such as Facebook have been changing over time, and both the potential and the limits of online collective organising. We also consider Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, how Peter found himself on an unexpected unity ticket with Rupert Murdoch, and how AI is challenging our understanding of both trust and truth itself.

Peter was the founding director of the Centre for Responsible Technology, established in 2019 as part of The Australia Institute. He hosts the Burning Platforms podcast and has recently established the Centre of the Public Square, an initiative to build better models of citizen collaboration and strengthen civil society by imagining new methodologies and alternate technologies to anchor this public space, as an initiative of the independent think tank Per Capita. He has also founded Civility Australia, which aims to build a better model of citizen engagement by giving civil society the tools to design and execute compelling collaborations that build a broader community consensus. 

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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 his new podcast, Time for Trust, Professor 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.

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