Survey Reveals Lack of Public Trust in Social Media Influencers, Politicians

How people receive information can end up being a crucial aspect of how they go about living their lives, and nothing has proved the importance of ascertaining such things more than the coronavirus pandemic. Ipsos conducted a research to develop what it referred to as a “veracity index”, basically a metric by which the trustworthiness of various institutions and individuals can end up being gauged. This index has revealed a lot about what people think to be trustworthy, as well as the sources of information that the average person might just end up relying on at the end of the day.

More pertinent than the most trusted individuals are the ones that received the lowest rankings on the list. All the way at the bottom are social media influencers who received only a 6% veracity rating indicating that barely anyone trusts the things that they say. This can have a massive impact on the influencer industry. While previously influencers have been considered to be game changers in the world of marketing since they can advertise products and services directly to their sizeable followings, but with all of that having been said and now out of the way it is important to note that the follower counts clearly don’t translate into actual influence in any significant way, shape or form.

People that hold a lot of real world power are also trusted very little by the public. Politicians, government ministers and business leaders all received very low ratings. Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up changing how people interact with the world around them, we might start to see a shift in how information is disseminated as well as an increased democratization of the various influential people that might be out there.

Scientific, academic and medical professionals all seem to be relatively well trusted by the public as these are the figures that received the highest rankings on this index. The world needs to trust people like this a lot more since they are the ones willing to provide reasonably impartial information that can end up being acted on, so it will be interesting to see if this influences how future pandemics and crises are resolved. Paying attention to this index can result in some pretty widespread changes in various industries and could be disruptive influence on the future all in all.


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