Better Ask Your Neighbor: Renegotiating Media Trust During the Russian–Ukrainian Conflict

Abstract

During violent conflict, the evaluation of information sources often presents a complex challenge. Social interactions play a critical role for mediating audiences’ trust as they negotiate contested information spreading across the media and social networks. This study uses focus groups and individual interviews, conducted in the propaganda-saturated environment of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, to investigate how audiences develop and negotiate practices for assigning trust to the mediated and social sources. It identifies three verification practices, each based on a different notion of pragmatic trust: Reliance on ideologically close sources; skepticism toward individual sources while trusting media as institution; or institutional distrust and cynical disillusionment. Each practice is embedded in participants’ social environment, which both supplies information and helps negotiating appropriate verification practices. The article concludes by discussing implications for studies of media trust and socially shaped understanding of the media.