Open AccessTrust and authority in the age of mediatised politics
Author(s) -
Anu Koivunen,
Johanna Vuorelma
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
european journal of communication
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.96
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1460-3705
pISSN - 0267-3231
DOI - 10.1177/02673231211072653
Subject(s) - politics , position (finance) , publics , sociology , corporate governance , journalism , public sphere , political authority , citizen journalism , public relations , moral authority , law , political science , media studies , moral disengagement , business , management , economics , finance
This article examines the role of trust in the age of mediatised politics. Authority, we suggest, can be successfully enacted despite the disrupted nature of the public sphere if both rational and moral trust are utilised to formulate validity claims. Drawing from Maarten A. Hajer's theorisation of authority in contemporary politics, we develop a model of how political actors and institutions as well as the media employ both rational and moral trust performances to generate authority. Analysing a Finnish case of controversial investigative journalism on defence intelligence, we show how the media in network governance need to critically evaluate the authority performances of political actors while at the same time enacting their own authority performances to retain their position within the governing network and to manufacture trust among networked publics. This volatile position can lead to situations where the media compete for authority with traditional political institutions.