Digital Society and Trust

The digital transformations of social life worlds radically alter the conditions for our trust relations. DIS-TRUST conducts philosophical investigations into whether and how theories of trust developed with the analogue worlds as their frame of reference are apt to describe trust in the increasingly digitally enhanced world.

This conceptual work is the basis for the ambition of DIS-TRUST to develop new models and conception of trust to fit the digitally enhanced social world of our times. The digital mediation of everyday activities calls for a methodological elaboration of philosophy’s conceptual analysis with concrete empirical case studies.

DIS-TRUST centers on four case studies, interpersonal trust mediate through social media and on travel platforms, citizens’ trust in municipalities’ case processing and the trust of citizens/consumers to digital service providers. Thus, by confronting philosophy’s conceptual work with concrete context embedded case studies DIS-TRUST investigates how conditions for interpersonal, institutional and generalized trust change in the digital society, as well as how new trust relations are formed, and what challenges digitalization poses to trust relations.

Thereby DIS-TRUST offers a necessary methodological innovation insisting on the interdependence between philosophy’s conceptual work and empirical case studies to produce new and timely knowledge on trust in the context of digital media and technologies. The research results may be put into practice informing organizations, public policy, and decision-making.