{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,2]],"date-time":"2025-08-02T17:08:31Z","timestamp":1754154511049,"version":"3.41.2"},"reference-count":22,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,19]],"date-time":"2008-09-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1221782400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,19]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Purpose<\/jats:title><jats:p>This paper aims to explore some initial and necessarily broad ideas about the effects of the world wide web on our methods of understanding and trusting, online and off.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>The paper considers the idea of trust via some of the revolutionary meanings inherent in the world wide web at its public conception in 1994, and some of its different meanings now. It does so in the context of the collaborative reader\u2010writer Web2.0 (of today), and also through a brief exploration of our relationship to the grand narratives (and some histories) of the post\u2010war West. It uses a variety of formal approaches taken from information science, literary criticism, philosophy, history, and journalism studies \u2013 together with some practical analysis based on 15 years as a web practitioner and content creator. It is a starting point.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>This paper suggests that a pronounced effect of the world wide web is the further atomising of many once\u2010shared Western post\u2010war narratives, and the global democratising of doubt as a powerful though not necessarily helpful epistemological tool. The world wide web is the place that most actively demonstrates contemporary doubt.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>This is the starting place for a piece of larger cross\u2010faculty (and cross\u2010platform) research into the arena of trust and doubt. In particular, the relationship of concepts such as news, event, history and myth with the myriad content platforms of new media, the idea of the digital consumer, and the impact of geography on knowledge that is enshrined in the virtual. This paper attempts to frame a few of the initial issues inherent in the idea of \u201ctrust\u201d in the digital age and argues that without some kind of shared aesthetics of narrative judgment brought about through a far broader public understanding of (rather than an interpretation of) oral, visual, literary and multi\u2010media narratives, stories and plots, we cannot be said to trust many types of knowledge \u2013 not just in philosophical terms but also in our daily actions and behaviours.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>This paper initiates debate about whether the creation of a new academic \u201cspace\u201d in which cross\u2010faculty collaborations into the nature of modern narrative (in terms of production and consumption; producers and consumers) might be able to help us to understand more of the social implications of the collaborative content produced for consumption on the world wide web.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/00012530810908175","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2008,9,20]],"date-time":"2008-09-20T07:05:43Z","timestamp":1221894343000},"page":"417-443","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Civilisation and its disconnects"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"60","author":[{"given":"Robin","family":"Hunt","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"key":"key2022021719551529800_b1","unstructured":"Adorno, T. 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