Trust Framework

For the past 2 years, the Rooted In Trust project has been building local networks in communities dealing with humanitarian crisis to provide a locally relevant and reliable alternative to mis- and disinformation. Based on this work, research was conducted, and a new framework was developed.  

Based on Focus Group Discussions, online data collection and key informant Internews across 10 different countries and contexts, the Internews teams around the world started seeing patterns in why certain information and certain information providers were more or less trusted.

These reasons were clustered a reduced to 4 elements, each with their sub-elements. Some might seem obvious, like accuracy, others like information being offered as “optional” – but once you realise this makes the difference between freedom of choice or having to rely on information that is curated and shared with the purpose to prevent people to make their own decisions, it might be clearer why this is an important part of having agency. Ultimately, it is important that we do not assume that people believe information blindly, not even when it’s shared with the best intentions to avoid that people will reject all information, because they have lost all trust in the available information and the institutions and organisations that are providing the information to them. 

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