Trust in online communities

Dr Ian Brown

Outline

Examples of online communities Policy goals Mechanisms for increasing trust Policy levers

Social networks worldwide

Source: Le Monde, 15/5/08

World of Warcraft

Second Life

Source: Second Life News, 27/9/07

MMO worlds active users

0

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

5,000,000

6,000,000

7,000,000

8,000,000

9,000,000

World of WarcraftHabbo HotelRunescapeClub PenguinWebkinzGaia OnlineGuild WorldsLineageSecond LifePuzzle Pirates

Data compiled by Omni Media Group, June 2007

Medical communities

Policy goals

Building social capital by strengthening networks of emotional and practical support

Reduce geographical barriers to participation in society

Reduce harm to young people

Reducing the rural divide

Source: OFCOM Communications Market Report 2008

Reducing harm to young people

Source: Tanya Byron (2008) Safer Children in a Digital World p.64

Safety guidelines for young users

Designing in trust Provide mechanisms to verify information,

provide non-verbal cues and link mutual acquaintances (Green, 2007)

Increase temporal, social and institutional embeddedness (Reigelsberger, Sasse & McCarthy, 2007)

Increase understanding (education, experimentation, openness), control and restitution (Lacohee, Phippen & Furnell, 2006)

Reputation mechanisms

Ranking systems How much community members like interacting with this person, on average

Rating systems How long and how much this person has participated in the community

Collaborative filtering

How well your activities and interests match up with those of this person

Implicit peer-based How often this person interacts with one or more of your friends

Explicit peer-based How much your friends like interacting with this person, on average

Jensen, Davies & Farnham (2002)

Facebook examples

Socially embedded

Institutionally embedded

Shared interests

Losing control of personal data

Binary nature of “friend” (Boyd, 2004)

Over-permissive defaults, esp. with networks

Application access to personal data (incl. friends)

Policy levers

Maximise competition to drive up quality of community sites - mandate interoperability for dominant players

Use privacy law to ensure user control over personal information and hence trust in communities

Encourage codes of conduct on takedown, safety advice and filtering

References Boyd DM (2004) Friendster and publicly articulated social

networking. Computer-Human Interaction ‘04, pp. 1279-1282 Green MC (2007) Trust and social interaction on the Internet. In

Joinson et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology pp.43-52

Jensen C, Davies J, Farnham S (2002) Finding Others Online: Reputation Systems for Social Online Spaces. Computer-Human Interaction ‘02, 4(1) p.449

Lacohee H, Phippen AD, Furnell SM (2006) Risk and Restitution: Assessing how users establish online trust. Computers & Security 25(7) pp.486-493

Riegelsberger J, Sasse MA, McCarthy JD (2007) Trust in mediated interactions. In Joinson et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology pp.53-70