This article examines the role of trust in the age of mediatised politics. Authority, we suggest, can be successfully enacted despite the disrupted nature of the public sphere if both rational and moral trust are utilised to formulate validity claims. Drawing from Maarten A. Hajer's theorisation of authority in contemporary politics, we develop a model of how political actors and institutions as well as the media employ both rational and moral trust performances to generate authority. Analysing a Finnish case of controversial investigative journalism on defence intelligence, we show how the media in network governance need to critically evaluate the authority performances of political actors while at the same time enacting their own authority performances to retain their position within the governing network and to manufacture trust among networked publics. This volatile position can lead to situations where the media compete for authority with traditional political institutions.

本文探讨了信任在媒介化政治时代的作用。我们建议，如果同时利用理性和道德信任来制定有效性主张，尽管公共领域的性质受到破坏，权威仍然可以成功制定。借鉴 Maarten A. Hajer 的当代政治权威理论，我们开发了一个模型，说明政治行为者和机构以及媒体如何利用理性和道德的信任表现来产生权威。分析芬兰关于国防情报的有争议的调查性新闻案例，我们展示了网络治理中的媒体如何需要批判性地评估政治行为者的权威表现，同时制定自己的权威表现以保持其在治理网络中的地位并在网络公众之间制造信任。这种不稳定的立场可能导致媒体与传统政治机构争夺权威。