Trust in digital information

Abstract

Trust in information is developing into a vitally important topic as the Internet becomes increasingly ubiquitous within society. Although many discussions of trust in this environment focus on issues like security, technical reliability, or e‐commerce, few address the problem of trust in the information obtained from the Internet. The authors assert that there is a strong need for theoretical and empirical research on trust within the field of information science. As an initial step, the present study develops a model of trust in digital information by integrating the research on trust from the behavioral and social sciences with the research on information quality and human– computer interaction. The model positions trust as a key mediating variable between information quality and information usage, with important consequences for both the producers and consumers of digital information. The authors close by outlining important directions for future research on trust in information science and technology.

Shall I Trust a Recommendation? Towards an Evaluation of the Trustworthiness of Recommender Sites

“…Therefore, comprehensive models of trust, originally designed to be applied in social science, have been adapted to fit digital information. Trust models can now describe trust in digital information as well as trust in information systems, in e-commerce, and in on-line relationships [10]. It is therefore legitimate to talk about trust in pieces of information, in on-line business services, and in virtual identities on the web.…”

“…This tie is defined in terms of an attitude that the trustor holds towards the trustee. Among the existing trust models we have selected that in Figure 1, due to Kelton et al [10]. It has been presented as a trust model for digital information and we consider it a candidate to describe trust in recommender sites.…”

“…It has been presented as a trust model for digital information and we consider it a candidate to describe trust in recommender sites. In the following paragraph we describe the main elements of this model Figure 1 Trust model (adapted from [10]). At the bottom of the picture there are the preconditions of trust; in double squares, the elements of trustworthiness and the elements of trust; in the squares at the top of the figure, there are the factors that influence trust; in round boxes, the processes of trust.…”

Simulating Diffusion with Conflicting Knowledge

“…Redundancy of information access has been shown, under certain conditions, to increase classification accuracy of web documents [22], an agent's trust in a piece of information [23] [24], the likelihood of winning a game where an increased pool of knowledge increases odds of success [25] and accuracy on classification problems using voters from Mechanical Turk [26].…”

Measuring behavioral trust in social networks

“…We adopt the notion of interpersonal trust as proposed in [8] by Wallace et al, which treats trust as a social tie between a trustor and a trustee [9]. Trust develops as part of an emotional relationship between a pair of people akin to the concepts of emotional and relational trust [10], [11].…”