Time for Trust? Scale and relationality in understanding trust relations between people, technologies and institutions

12pm-1pm, Wednesday 10th April 2024

Presented by Prof. Terry Flew, ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of Digital Communications, The University of Sydney

Venue: Rm 277, Sydney Knowledge Hub

This talk will provide an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of trust research, considering how both the scale of interactions (local, national, global) and the manner in which technologies mediate communications shape developments in trust over time. With case studies based around trust in news media, trust in digital platforms and trust in artificial intelligence (AI), it will consider the opportunities for collaboration between the science, engineering and technology fields and research in the humanities and social sciences. Importantly it will emphasize that consideration of “trusted systems” needs to incorporate an institutional dimension so that questions of accountability, transparency and governance receive appropriate scholarly attention.

About the speaker

Terry Flew is Professor of Digital Communications and Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney. His books include The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (SAGE, 2012), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013), Media Economics (Palgrave, 2015), Understanding Global Media (Palgrave, 2018), Regulating Platforms (Polity, 2021), and Digital Platform Regulation: Global Perspectives on Internet Governance (Springer, 2022). He was President of the International Communications Association (ICA) from 2019 to 2020, and is an ICA Fellow, elected in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA). In 2011-12 he chaired a review of the Australian media classification system for the Australian Law Reform Commission. Organisations he has advised include the OECD, Australian Communication and Media Authority, Cisco Systems, Special Broadcasting Service, Meta and Telstra. His ARC Laureate Fellowship is a five-year study (2024-2028) of Mediated Trust: Ideas, Interests, Institutions, Futures.