Launch of the DIS-TRUST Research Project
On Thursday, February 29th 2024, we launched the Digital Society and Trust (DIS-TRUST) research project at an event that coincided with the annual meeting of the Danish Society of Philosophy at Roskilde University. The DIS-TRUST’s project objective is to examine how relations of trust are formed within, and changed by, our digitally enhanced social world. In order to grasp how digitalization impacts trust, DIS-TRUST works with four relations of trust: interpersonal trust, trust in institutions, trust in technology, and trust in oneself.
The launch commenced with Esther Oluffa Pedersen, PI of the project, giving an overview of the philosophical approach to trust framing all sub-projects and continued with each of the researchers in the DIS-TRUST core group sharing their research plans, each looking to explore different aspects of trust and distrust as they exist and evolve in digital spaces through different specific research questions. The day unfolded with lively discussions and insightful comments by guests and members of the project’s Advisory Board. Introducing the project, Prof. Charles Ess (University of Oslo), who has worked extensively on trust and digitalization, praised the relevance of what the project sets out to investigate and the soundness of the theoretical approach: "Over the past four years I've reviewed several hundred proposals in response to various national funding calls. Very many of these have been quite strong in various ways, and by my lights (and those of my colleagues) some 40 or so of these emerged as absolutely at the top in these highly competitive domains. First of all, DIS-TRUST more than comfortably stands along these best of the best. And in one particularly urgent way, moreover, the project is especially to be lauded and encouraged: this is its distinctive conjunction of an absolutely solid set of highly sophisticated theoretical foundations with thoroughly well-grounded empirical / research-oriented elements - all aimed at nothing less than developing practicable approaches towards enhancing trust relationships in online environments. Given the utterly essential role trust plays in making human societies possible, much less as domains in which we may thrive and flourish both individually and collectively – I find it very difficult indeed to point to anything else like DIS-TRUST that promises to be so potentially transformative and beneficent".
The timeliness of the project was highlighted by Prof. Esther Keymolen, from Tillburg University, who was also one of the keynote speakers at the DFS conference: “the DIS-TRUST project delves into a timely issue, poised to become even more crucial as our society becomes increasingly data-driven. The team, comprised of expert scholars from diverse perspectives and disciplines, is uniquely equipped to tackle this challenge. I will definitely be following their work and I am much looking forward to their first publications!”
Members of the advisory board Ass. Prof. Luciana Benotti (Via Libre AI ethics team and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba) and Ass. Prof. Maria Brincker (University of Massachusetts) also shared their thoughts. Luciana Benotti views the issues of trust and distrust in the digital society as one that transcends geographical boundaries. For Benotti, it is fundamental to generate knowledge and strengthen digital literacy when regulations and ethics must be considered within a growing digitalized system, especially one that involves the use of artificial intelligence. Luciana's team at Via Libre made a blog post reflecting on the issue of developing AI systems without regards to context.
Meeting up with the DIS-TRUST-team Maria Brincker underscored the high spirits surrounding the group: "The launch event was incredibly inspiring and the enthusiasm among all the team members was palpable. And rightly so - as the project is incredibly timely and promises to be innovative both empirically and theoretically.".
A short overview of the project:
The social phenomenon of trust is conceptualized as a continuum of trust and distrust which is experienced as habitual trust/distrust and reflectively acted out as intentional trust/distrust. Thus, we approach trust as a relational phenomenon embedded in the social world. The contextually embedded investigations in the sub-projects put emphasis on the interplay of the four concepts of interpersonal trust, trust in institutions, trust in technology, and trust in oneself in various ways.
Sub-project one, conducted by Esther Oluffa Pedersen, deals specifically with the question: How are interpersonal trust relations influenced by digital mediation? The focus is primarily on trust relations on Facebook.
The second sub-project, conducted by Micol Mieli, will address the question of how new forms of trust relations come into being with the affordances of platform technologies, starting with the case of the online accommodation platform Airbnb.
The third sub-project will be conducted by PhD fellow Freja Schiermer Larsen and addresses the question of how citizens and consumers do and can trust providers of online services in four context-embedded cases.
Mads Vestergaard will carry out the fourth sub-project, addressing the question: How is digitalization of governmental institutions shaping relations of trust? The project will focus on relations of trust and distrust between citizens and governmental institutions and employees as well notions of trust and distrust in local and national policy.