DigitalMANIPULATIVE

Trust Erosion Campaigns

What it is

Systematic efforts to undermine public trust in institutions, experts, media, and shared knowledge — making the population unable to coordinate or resist.

How it works

When people don't trust any institution, expert, or information source, they become atomized and unable to coordinate collective action. Trust erosion campaigns don't need to promote an alternative — they just need to make everything seem equally unreliable. "Nothing is true, everything is possible" is the goal state that serves authoritarian interests.

Real-world examples

•Campaigns systematically attacking the credibility of journalists, scientists, educators, and institutions.
•Flooding the information space with contradictory narratives to create the impression that truth is unknowable.
•"Do your own research" rhetoric that undermines trust in expertise while providing no viable alternative epistemology.

Ethical guidelines

●Trust is the foundation of democratic society — eroding it is profoundly destructive.
●Legitimate criticism of institutions is healthy; systematic delegitimization of all institutions is warfare.
●The beneficiaries of total trust erosion are those who want to operate without accountability.

How to defend against it

►Distinguish between specific, justified criticism of institutions and blanket delegitimization of all institutions.
►Maintain calibrated trust: no institution is perfect, but some are more reliable than others, and reliability can be evaluated.
►When someone tells you to trust nothing, ask who benefits from your inability to distinguish reliable from unreliable information.

DISARM framework

How analysts would file this in the open DISARM framework (v1.6.1, CC BY-SA 4.0). Closest matches, mapped by Persuasion Lab.

T0075.001Discredit Credible SourcesT0135Undermine

References

Pomerantsev, P. (2014). Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia. PublicAffairs
Source of the phrase the entry quotes; describes a media system that undermines the idea of verifiable truth rather than promoting a rival narrative.
Paul, C., & Matthews, M. (2016). The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It. RAND Corporation, PE-198-OSD
Describes high-volume, multichannel, contradictory messaging with no commitment to consistency — the 'flood with contradictory narratives' example.
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the "post-truth" era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353–369
Analysis of the post-truth environment in which the goal is not belief in a falsehood but generalised distrust of all sources, and its consequences for collective action.
Kavanagh, J., & Rich, M. D. (2018). Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. RAND Corporation
Documents declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information and the blurring of opinion and fact as drivers of institutional distrust.

Last reviewed 2026-09-12

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