Americans’ trust in democratic institutions has been strained over the past few years. The stress fractures are expressed in everything from cries of “fake news” against the media, to outrage over violent and racist police actions, to suspicion about COVID-19 precautions and vaccines, to the siege on the US Capitol Building in the aftermath of the presidential election. When trust in institutions falls, the populace can be stirred into action. Depending on the issue and the group, this action can have negative or positive impacts on society. 

In this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen speaks with Ethan Zuckerman, professor of public policy, communications and information at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and author of the newly released Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them.

Zuckerman’s work looks at how mistrust in the United States has led to activism and institutional change, from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, to Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and Occupy Wall Street. But he warns that mistrust can also be used in negative ways. “One thing mistrust is very, very good at doing is getting people to disengage. If you feel like you have no control over a political situation, if you feel like you have no way of making your voice heard, if everything is a fait accompli, you stop playing the game,” Zuckerman explains. “The other thing that mistrust seems to do, and this is fascinating, is that mistrust sort of reads as a choppy sea. It reads as a complicated scenario that no one knows how to find their way through. And then whoever it is who manages to thrive in that scenario, that person is destined to lead”—a tactic, Zuckerman says, that both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have exploited. 

Ultimately, Zuckerman says, “mistrust is a perfectly reasonable thing to have”: it is up to society to critically think about its institutions and determine which ones are worth protecting, which ones need reform, and which ones should be torn down altogether.