Trust needs concrete settings and visibility to be tested against risk.

Evidence

The development of trust and distrust depends on local milieu and personal experience. These conditions may be extended by television culture, for instance in the case of political leaders. The testing and control of trust and the continuing perception of those symbolic events that eventually destroy it require a relatively concrete setting. They depend on a previous structural reduction of complexity. Moreover, they require a visible relation to one’s own decisions about accepting a risk. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1427

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘visible relation to one’s own decisions’ and ‘concrete setting’ requirements align with Hardin’s observability thesis — Saramago’s blindness strips precisely this concrete, visible setting.
• QUESTION: How does television culture extend trust conditions yet also, per Luhmann, distance the concrete setting that genuine testing requires? A productive tension worth chasing.