Study Finds Google Is More Trusted Than Traditional Media

According to a study by market research company Zogby International, people trust Google, Apple, and Microsoft more than the traditional media. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter scored lowest on the trust scale, but still soundly beat the media. From the article: "The traditional media received little sympathy from the public, with only eight percent of all adults and six percent of young adults saying they trusted them."

Comments

Re:The elephant in the summery

[cappp]

There are, as usual, some important caveats. This is the finding of a Zogby poll, a polling firm that Nate Silver fondly refers to as “the worst pollster in the world” and one whose methodology has been consistently critiqued. Further, it’s an online poll that obviously elicits a very specific kind of response.

Given the aforementioned, the specific numbers hardly paint the picture the summary provides.

While Microsoft, Apple and Google were each trusted by 49%, the percentage expressing little or no trust was higher for Microsoft and Google (both 46%) than it was for Apple (35%). The percentage of not sure responses was higher for Apple (15%) than for for both Google and Microsoft, both 5%. Adults under 30 had the least trust in the two computer giants, especially Microsoft. Among First GlobalsTM under 30, 34% had trust in Microsoft and 41% in Apple. That age group's trust in Facebook (20%) and Twitter (15%) was also greater than that of older age groups.

I recommend you go over and look at the original report yourselves, it makes some really odd choices – for instance lumping together “trust a little” and “not at all.” Similarly "The Media" represents some monolithic entity - which is also primed against given the pervasive creation and politicization of the catagory of "mainstream media" - whilst Twitter, Google, and Apple somehow deserve their own catagories.

Re:The elephant in the summery

[Shrike82]

Also, from what I can see they never actually specify what we're supposed to be trusting them with? Our lives? Our children? Our cars? Are we trusting Microsoft, Apple and Google not to tell the world about that time that we accidentally wet the bed when we were really drunk and the three of them put our hand in warm water?

Call me crazy, but a poll with such generic ideas of trust seems almost as useless as a poll about which type of tree people trust the most. Damn, those Nordic Pines look a bit shifty...