180169 SE Trust (and Privacy) in Online Communication (2013W)

Trust in online environments has emerged as a central thematic at the intersections of philosophy and computing. As K. Løgstrup has made clear, trust is essential for human social life. And as more and more of our lives are best described as “onlife” – i.e., the more or less seamless interweaving between what were once more distinct domains (online / offline) – the problems and possibilities of establishing, enhancing, and/or losing trust online become all the more central. Specifically: “trust” is not simply a concern of e-commerce – e.g., how to encourage potential users and customers to trust an online store, netbank, etc. – but, more fundamentally, a matter of our social lives most broadly, i.e., from the personal and familial (including the intimesfære and privatleben) to the social and political. At the same time, however, the affordances and possibilities of online communication can both frustrate or foster the cultivation of trust a core requirement and virtue for a good “onlife.”
To explore these matters in detail, we first review diverse philosophical accounts of trust, and then examine how trust is further elaborated within the frameworks and disciplines of phenomenology, computer ethics, Kantian and virtue ethics, and the empirical findings of Internet Studies, with particular focus on the affordances of online communication vis-à-vis online identities, communities, and social networks. We then explore in depth how trust emerges and is defined in still more nuanced ways, including: trust as a virtue (J. Weckert, S. Vallor); trust and trustworthiness as relational concepts (H. Tavani, J. Simon); trust, phronesis, and phenomenology (C. Ess); trust among Artificial Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (M. Taddeo); and the social epistemology of trust online in polarization and information cascades (D. Elgesem).