Reframing trust, power and public relations in global financial discourses: Experts and the production of mistrust in life insurance

This study challenges the validity of a role for public relations (PR) as ‘trust strategist’ in global financial markets, by reframing trust, power and PR. The reframing takes place in three stages: First, by shifting the trajectory of PR research to focus on Giddens’s system trust theory, which, until now, has received little prominence in PR scholarship. Second, by drawing on Foucauldian perspectives to link system trust relations and power relations through discourse; revealing the strategies and practices used to produce trust in global discourses. Third, by locating PR activity within discursive moments of trust/mistrust production, repositioning PR as a ‘trust intermediary’ in global discourses.