Trust in Online Communities

Slide 1: Trust in online communities Dr Ian Brown

Slide 2: Outline  Examples of online communities  Policy goals  Mechanisms for increasing trust  Policy levers

Slide 3: Social networks worldwide Source: Le Monde, 15/5/08

Slide 4: World of Warcraft

Slide 5: Second Life Source: Second Life News, 27/9/07

Slide 6: MMO worlds active users 9,000,000 8,000,000 World of Warcraft 7,000,000 Habbo Hotel 6,000,000 Runescape Club Penguin 5,000,000 Webkinz 4,000,000 Gaia Online Guild Worlds 3,000,000 Lineage 2,000,000 Second Life Puzzle Pirates 1,000,000 0 Data compiled by Omni Media Group, June 2007

Slide 7: Medical communities

Slide 8: 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

Slide 9: Reducing the rural divide Source: OFCOM Communications Market Report 2008

Slide 10: Reducing harm to young people Source: Tanya Byron (2008) Safer Children in a Digital World p.64

Slide 11: Safety guidelines for young users

Slide 12: 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)

Slide 13: 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 How well your activities and interests match filtering 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)

Slide 14: Facebook examples Shared interests Institutionally embedded Socially embedded

Slide 15: Losing control of personal data  Binary nature of “friend” (Boyd, 2004)  Over-permissive defaults, esp. with networks  Application access to personal data (incl. friends)

Slide 16: 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

Slide 17: 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, FarnhamS (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 M McCarthy JD (2007) Trust in A, mediated interactions. In Joinson et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology pp.53-70