Title: The Rise & Fall of Online Trust

Date: Friday, April 14, 2023

Time: 9:00AM- 12:00 PM (EST)

Location: (Virtual) https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98178827883

Yixuan (Janice) Zhang

Ph.D. Candidate in Human-Centered Computing

School of Interactive Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee

Dr. Andrea G. Parker, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology (Advisor)

Dr. Leysia Palen, Departments of Information Science and Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Dr. Rebecca E. Grinter, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Neha Kumar, School of International Affairs and School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. John T. Stasko, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract

Online trust (i.e., an individual's belief in and willingness to rely on information, sources, and platforms) is becoming a central issue of modern society. Trusting fallacies (e.g., believing in misinformation) can harm the wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole. The issues of trust are further complicated when crises unfold. During crises, the inconclusive, conflicting, and time-sensitive information created by varied sources and disseminated on diverse platforms can engender a sense of confusion and uncertainty. This uncertainty makes it difficult for people to determine what and whom they should trust.

My research highlights that trust is a dynamic and recursive process that fluctuates based on contextual factors. Through six studies, including five empirical studies and one systematic review, I have explored the evolution of online trust from consumers' perspectives as well as examined content producers' practices in generating trustworthy content during crises. Specifically, my first three studies demonstrate how people use and trust crisis informatics applications and social media during crises, as well as how trust and distrust evolve over time. In addition to understanding online trust formation and evolution from consumers' perspectives, I have critically evaluated the evolving content produced during crises, with a focus on COVID-19 data visualizations as an initial foray, and examined the practices related to how producers generate trustworthy content through two studies, respectively. Furthermore, my systematic review of trust in social media seeks to demystify, disambiguate, operationalize, and defamiliarize the commonly-used terms of trust, mistrust, and distrust, and identifies patterns in study designs, definitions, conceptualizations, measurements of trust concepts, and the antecedents and consequences of trust concepts in the context of social media. I also discuss future research directions focused on building tools to address issues of online trust, investigating the risks of AI to prevent “manipulating” trust, and developing theoretical frameworks to guide rigorous future studies.

Collectively, this dissertation contributes to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and crisis informatics research through several empirical studies of understanding the formation and development of online trust, unpacking the challenges and tensions involved in producing content and technologies that consumers find trustworthy, and using this work to develop systems in helping people (re)gain trust and address issues of mistrust.