I arrived at BU in January of this year with an extraordinary challenge and opportunity\u2014to start a center within the College of Communication that might help make sense of, and imagine solutions to our democratic trust crisis. A recent Gallup poll reported that only 28% of Americans trust the media. That\u2019s down from 72% in 1976. Among Republicans, current trust in the media is 8%. In an April 2025 poll, the Partnership for Public Service reported that only 33% of Americans trusted the federal government. And a Pew poll last spring found that our trust in each other, in neighbors and acquaintances, has declined from 46% in 1972 to 34% in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have arrived at an historic low point in our trust in the media, the government, and each other. This problem has multiple causes\u2014from political corruption and corporate aggregation, to our insatiable dependence on screens, algorithms that keep us consuming them at alarming rates, the ease of media manipulation with AI, and the increasing ability to deny facts and evidence with cynical claims of manipulation. Our trust crisis is also a communication crisis. How narratives are formed and distributed influences who trusts institutions and why. If you don\u2019t trust the government, you\u2019re not going to trust its messaging. If you don\u2019t trust the message, you\u2019re not going to trust the institution behind it. It\u2019s a vicious cycle. We need to figure out how to develop shared narratives. That\u2019s the only way to achieve the shared histories and purpose that will hold us together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this reason, MISI takes a scholarly and<\/em> practical approach. We will create knowledge about our communication ecosystem, and work alongside those here in New England who are affected by the negative consequences of misinformation and distrust to consider how we communicate with each other, and deliver facts in ways that reach people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve been hard at work in building our foundation, which we see as a three legged stool: Research, Fellowship, and Practice (RFP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our research<\/strong> is focused on how people come to trust information, and the role that technologies, institutions, community connections, and physical geographies play in forming that trust. We ground our work in the New England area, which allows us to do research in collaboration with institutions and organizations who are working each day to find solutions to their communication challenges. We\u2019ll be announcing specific research efforts very soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MISI is committed to building fellowship<\/strong> at BU and beyond. With generous support from the Mellon Foundation, we have invited 15 people from across the university and the region to explore novel means of communicating about climate or environmental justice. Half of them are faculty at BU from a range of humanistic and social scientific disciplines; the rest come from outside the university, with a range of experience in activism and journalism. We are eager to build partnerships across BU, across the city and region, and across disciplines. Our hope for the fellowship is to figure out the right questions to ask, so that we might strive to understand how innovations in media can lead to social impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Supporting practice <\/strong>means providing resources to artists, storytellers, and practitioners who are inventing or adopting novel means of communicating in order to build trust within and across communities. We will work alongside activists and policy makers to build new tech tools, reimagine how to use existing tools, and to explore new ways of telling stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At bottom, whether it\u2019s reaching across the aisle or the Thanksgiving table, we need to figure out how to talk to each other in a way that doesn\u2019t feel like we\u2019re talking at each other or down to those who disagree with us or lack the facts. The philosopher Martin Buber, from whom I take significant inspiration, said that the \u201cchief presupposition for the rise of genuine dialogue is that each should regard his partner as the very one he is.\u201d So much political speech, in its memes and attention seeking jabs, has abandoned dialogue as a frame of reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MISI is committed to dialogue\u2014to exploring communication tools and strategies that acknowledge both the speaker and<\/em> the listener. I invite you to join us as we build knowledge of how this works, and support the community and practice necessary for a communication ecosystem that supports a thriving democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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