Conceptualizing Trust in Digital Environments

This panel focuses on one of the fundamental and longest-standing themes in Internet research - trust. Early research in Internet studies addressed the issue of trust indirectly, through work on identity and anonymity (e.g., Turkle 1984; Van Gelder 1988) and a focus on social cues (e.g. Kiesler et al. 1984; Hiltz and Turoff 1978). Over the past twenty years, these early lines of research have developed into multifaceted and detailed studies of trust in all forms of digital settings - from email to web pages to blogs - and in various areas of Internet use, such as interpersonal communication, commerce, e-governance, health communication, education, data sharing in e-research, and so on (e.g., Bailey et al. 1998; Resnic 2002; Fox & Rainie 2002; Wang 2005; Dutton &Shepherd 2003; Bedi & Banati 2006; Prieto 2009; Whitty and Joinson 2009). In this panel, we address this important issue by looking first at sociological perspectives on trust, specifically in relation to Internet research (Laura Gurak). We then turn to two cases of configuring trust in digital environments; namely, we analyze trust with regard to online genetic testing (Anna Harris, Sally Wyatt and Susan Kelly), and digital cultural heritage (Smiljana Antonijevic). Finally, we examine how a relationship between age and trust can be explained by experience with the Internet and general attitudes toward technology (Grant Blank and William Dutton)