The economy of suspicion: Why trust is becoming the most valuable asset for companies

In a tense economic climate shaped by fake news, reputation becomes critical. Discover how the trust crisis impacts companies and what entrepreneurs can do to protect their business.

For companies and brands, the first signs of a crisis do not always appear in macroeconomic indicators. They also show up in people’s behavior.

Recent retail data reflects this shift: food sales dropped by over 21% in January 2026 compared to December 2025, a sign that households are rapidly adjusting their consumption behavior in a tense economic context. This economic shift also has a less discussed consequence: a crisis of trust.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, economic anxiety is now one of the main factors eroding social trust. The study shows that around 70% of people say they hesitate to trust individuals or organizations that use different sources of information or hold different values. In such a climate, negative information—even false information—spreads much faster and is more easily believed. For companies, this is a major vulnerability.

In over 22 years of working in communication and crisis management, I have seen this mechanism repeat itself many times. Reputational crises do not always occur when you make a major mistake. Sometimes they arise from a combination of a tense social context, incomplete information, and the speed at which it spreads.

Today, technology amplifies this phenomenon. Artificial intelligence has democratized content production: credible images, texts, or video clips can be generated in minutes. At the same time, social media algorithms favor emotional and polarizing content—exactly the type of information that spreads the fastest.

The result is an information ecosystem in which reputations can be affected extremely quickly. In many cases, reputational crises no longer stem from real company issues, but from perceptions or incomplete information that go viral before the organization has time to react.

However, fake news has a different dynamic than a classic crisis. One of the most common mistakes I have seen over the years is companies’ reflex to aggressively debunk false information. Intuitively, it seems logical: if the information is false, you explain and correct it.

In reality, things don’t always work that way. Once fake news reaches a certain volume of online conversation, attempting to debunk it head-on can have the opposite effect: it amplifies it, because that’s how algorithms are designed. This phenomenon is known as the Streisand effect—the moment when trying to correct or hide information only makes it more visible.

In the digital age, algorithms don’t help at all. On the contrary, they favor exactly the type of content that generates strong emotional reactions. And denials, controversies, and public disputes are precisely the kind of content that keeps the conversation alive.

There is also another common trap: trying to respond to fake news exclusively with rational arguments and detailed explanations. This doesn’t always work either.

Social psychology shows us that people are wired in a paradoxical way: we often care more about the perception of the majority than about our own analysis of the facts. We tend to adjust our opinions to align with what we believe others think. That’s why people can be influenced by fake news even when, rationally, they know the information is false.

In such situations, companies must understand that the stake is not just factual truth, but also social perception. It is not enough to prove that the information is false, but it is essential to act quickly and try to remove the false information from media platforms as fast as possible (and this is where the discussion begins about why I still believe more in press communication than influencer communication—but that’s a topic for another time). It is equally important to show that others also believe the information is false.

Social validation—coming from experts, opinion leaders, institutions, or relevant communities—often becomes more powerful than a company’s technical explanation.

For entrepreneurs, the lesson is simple: reputation is no longer just an image or marketing element. It has become business infrastructure.

In times of economic uncertainty, companies that people trust are the ones that manage to retain customers, employees, and partners. The others become much more vulnerable to perception-driven crises.

From crisis communication consulting experience, there are three simple things entrepreneurs should keep in mind in 2026.

The first is information speed. In a world where fake news can appear at any time, a company’s greatest vulnerability is silence. Organizations must constantly monitor conversations about their brand and be ready to quickly clarify incorrect information.

The second is behavioral consistency. Trust is not built in a single campaign or one inspired communication moment. It is built through a long series of small moments in which the company proves it is transparent, responsible, and consistent. In a crisis, you don’t start building reputation—you only test it. After two decades of working in reputation management, I have seen companies that navigated difficult situations relatively easily precisely because they already had this trust capital. And I have seen organizations collapse reputationally not because of the crisis itself, but because they lacked this foundation.

The third is preparation. One of the biggest myths about crises is that they can only be managed when they occur. In reality, the first stages of proper crisis management begin long before: scenarios, internal training, simulations, and, perhaps most importantly, the courage to put on paper even the most unpleasant or unlikely risks a company might face (once you see them and name them, they are no longer a surprise).

This exercise is not comfortable for any organization. But it is essential. Companies that imagine the most difficult scenarios in advance are almost always the ones that respond more clearly when something actually happens.

All of this starts from the same reality: we live in an economy of suspicion. Economic anxiety, social polarization, and the explosion of generative technologies create a context in which perceptions can shift extremely fast. For entrepreneurs, the challenge is no longer just to grow their business, but to protect their trust capital.

Paradoxically, in a world dominated by technology and algorithms, the competitive advantage remains a deeply human one: trust.