(iPoster) Trust Substitution in Crisis Communication: Typhoon Haiyan

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Political Communication II & The Political Power of Film and Reality TV
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Communication II

Abstract

Political communication research has overgeneralized a trust erosion model in which misinformation is assumed to undermine democracy by degrading institutional trust. This model is derived largely from high trust and institutionally consolidated contexts. It travels poorly to much of the Global South, where institutional authority is historically limited, trust is thin rather than declining, and platform mediated communication often functions as the primary infrastructure for collective sense making and action. This paper challenges trust erosion accounts by showing how misinformation can shape public cognition and behavior under conditions of extreme uncertainty without necessarily producing trust collapse.

Drawing on the case of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, the study treats the disaster as a baseline stress test of platform mediated crisis communication in a Global South context that predates the diffusion of generative artificial intelligence, synthetic media, and large scale automated influence operations. This baseline design isolates foundational dynamics of crisis information flow in low trust environments, allowing the analysis to identify communicative mechanisms that persist across subsequent waves of technological change.

The paper advances a Trust Substitution Framework, arguing that in low trust crisis environments publics adapt to institutional communication gaps through functionally differentiated information practices that partially substitute for absent authoritative guidance. The framework specifies three mechanisms. Explanatory substitution occurs when unverified claims provide provisional interpretations that reduce uncertainty and restore narrative coherence. Attribution substitution occurs when crisis communication organizes responsibility and blame in the absence of clear institutional accounts, shaping how legitimacy is contested. Coordination substitution occurs when crisis information, including messages that are incomplete or unverified, provides actionable cues for requests, matching, and collective problem solving, sustaining coordination even as formal institutional channels remain fragmented.

Empirically, the analysis constructs an analytical sample from the CrisisLexT26 Twitter corpus through a theory driven filtering procedure that isolates primary crisis communication. Tweets are restricted to original English language posts and screened to remove automated or duplicative content. The resulting dataset is analyzed using a mixed methods design combining computational text analysis with targeted qualitative coding. Messages are classified by communicative function rather than veracity, and temporal patterns of functional co movement are examined across phases of delayed or fragmented institutional communication.

The findings revise dominant accounts of democratic vulnerability by demonstrating that in Global South crisis settings mis and unverified information does not function solely as a destabilizing force. Instead, it frequently operates in tandem with coordination and sense making practices that enable collective action under conditions of institutional absence and extreme uncertainty. This reframing shifts the analytical focus from trust collapse to communicative adaptation, showing that democratic vulnerability in the Global South follows a distinct logic rooted in how publics navigate informational scarcity rather than how trust is eroded.

More broadly, the paper positions civic information infrastructures as a foundational but under theorized component of democratic resilience in crisis contexts. It shows that democratic communication is protected not only through content moderation or accuracy based interventions, but through the capacity of information systems to sustain coordination, attribution, and action when formal institutions fail to do so. By identifying where institutional intervention, platform design, and locally embedded communicative practices can reinforce these functions without suppressing collective coordination, the study directly informs efforts to protect and rebuild democratic communication under conditions of systemic stress.

Authors

• Kexi Wu, China University of Political Science and Law

• Dai Wan