Introduction: Two Literatures on Trust

I approach the topic of trust from two converging directions. The first derives from work primarily in the domains of Information and Computing Ethics (ICE) –work that also includes perspectives from phenomenology and a range of applied ethical theories. The second draws from media and communication studies most broadly, beginning with Medium Theory or Media Ecology traditions affiliated with the likes of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Walter Ong. In these domains, attention to communication in online environments, including distinctively virtual environments, began within what was first demarcated as studies of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). The rise of the Internet and then the World Wide Web in the early 1990s inspired new kinds of research within CMC; by 2000 or so, it became possible to speak of Internet Studies (IS) as a distinctive field in its own right, as indexed, for example, by the founding of the Oxford Internet Institute.

Drawing on both of these sources to explore a range of issues at their intersections – most certainly including trust – is useful first of all as the more empirically oriented research constituting CMC and IS work thereby grounds the often more theoretical approaches of ICE in the fine-grained details of praxis. At the same time, the more theoretical approaches of ICE, as we will see, help us complement the primarily social scientific theories and methodologies that predominate in CMC and IS. By taking both together, I hope to provide an account of trust in online environments that is at once strongly rooted in empirical findings while also grounded in and illuminated by a very wide range of theoretical perspectives. This approach requires at least one important caveat, to which I return shortly.