I’ve summarized (more like “highlighted”) the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, a world survey of public opinion. Canadian results are foregrounded.
-9 countries out of 27 surveyed sit at “all-time lows” of economic optimism and only 34% of Canadian respondents answered affirmatively to the prompt “My family and I will be better off in five years’ time”
-trust in social media has fallen sharply to just 37% globally (a stark 21% in Canada)
-Canada’s overall trust level (54%) is a full eleven points higher than the same indicator in the USA (43%)
-“distrust is the default” as 59% of respondents worldwide indicate a tendency to distrust
-48% of respondents globally say government is a “dividing force in society” and 52% affirmed that “Capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world”
-big majorities in every country are worried about “fake news being used as a weapon”
-“Government leaders” are generally not trusted by respondents (42%) while “My coworkers” (74%) and “Scientists” (75%) sit at the other end of the trust spectrum
-large and growing majorities of respondents worry that “Journalists,” “government leaders” and “Business leaders” are “purposely trying to mislead people”
-USA: only 24% of Republicans trust the media vs. 55% of Democrats
-Germany and the Netherlands share two telling trends: falling overall trust and significant “trust inequality” (the gap in trust between high income and low income) Germans are also very distrustful of their central bank with only 47% of respondents indicating trust, the fourth lowest result of 27 countries
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