A Dichotomy of Trust in Virtual Communities

27/04/2010 Amna Iftikhar 30 comments

1. Introduction
Since early 1980s, virtual communities have existed on the Internet in the form of Usenet newsgroups. These communities and the accompanying research have recorded exponential growth with the advent of the World Wide Web. Virtual communities form as a result of common interest among individuals and groups to discuss for example, a hobby, a common past experience, or enduring a disease common among the group members. Scholars generally agree on the characteristics that are associated with a virtual community (Stockdale, 2006). For example a virtual community is comprised of members who share an interest, interact repeatedly, generate shared resources, develop governance policies, demonstrate reciprocity, and share cultural norms (Preece, 2000). However, the actual definition of the term “virtual community” often differs based on which individuals join or visit a community (Lee et al, 2003, Preece, 2000). For example, the earliest virtual communities tended to focus on member’s social interests, many more recent virtual communities focus on member’s commercial interests (Kannan et al, 2000).

The meeting place in everyday life can be equated to a web portal on the Internet. The underlying technology is supported by email lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, message boards and bulletin boards. The members of the virtual community form strong relationships. These personal bonds sometimes translate into deep community attachments (Hiltz, 1984; 1997). These interesting community attachments form despite the typical limitations of computer communications, notably the absence of personal interpretations from tone and voice, dress, physical attributes that are all missing in the virtual world . Despite these limitations, the community relationships have been seen to flourish based solely on the conversation through the cyber space. The key element in the building of these relationships is the element of trust that exists among the members. Trust has an effect on the members to exchange information through the virtual community (Ridings et al, 2002).

This paper examines the virtual communities on the Internet, those that form without a formal approval from a government body or organization or for that matter any person for an expressed academic or economic interest. Interest groups, for example, a group of men fighting the prostate cancer sharing their experiences and concerns in a virtual environment is a typical example of a virtual community for the purpose discussion in this paper.

2. Cultivation of Trust in Virtual Communities
There is no consensus regarding the concept of trust (Gefen et al, 2003), but most agree that certain beliefs, such as integrity, benevolence, competency and/or judgment, reflects one’s trustworthiness (Doney and Cannon, 1997). In a social relationship, trust is an important ingredient. (Blau, 1964). The multidimensional concept of trust has to do with the beliefs of skills/expertise of the trusted person have in a certain area. Ability relates to the belief that the other person knows what he or she is discussing. Since virtual communities are concerned with focusing on a particular topic at one time, this trait is particularly relevant. Benevolence is concerned with the expectation that others would have a positive desire to do good to the person entrusted with the information. It is expected that the trustee would reciprocate with advice, help guidance and intent to support the ongoing discussion. This is particularly important in virtual communities since without positive reciprocating response, the community may cease to exist. Integrity in the context of virtual communities implies that the members will act in accordance with socially set values of honesty like refraining from telling lies and providing verifiable information.

One of the definitions of trust is the willingness to take a calculated risk based on someone‘s behavior (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman 1995). It has also been defined as a means to reducing social uncertainty (Gefen, Karahanna, 2003, Luhmann, 1979). In the context of virtual communities, trust is used to reduce the level of social complexity associated with the behavior of other members. It also employs to reduce the fear that the other member may take advantage by engaging to cash the opportunity if it exists (Gefen et al, 2003), much in the same way as it does in communities in everyday life (Fukuyama, 1995).

Trust is a critical element in a virtual environment (knoll, and Leinder, 1998). The confidence and the feeling of security can be enhanced among virtual team members through trust. It also promotes confidence and security in addition to promoting open information exchange.

The computer based interaction eliminates the traditional experience of feeling the warmth and attention and of course trust. Lack of direct face to face contact in computer communications may have a negative impact on the understanding of a communication sent across the network. It has been found that electronically communicated information is relatively difficult to comprehend in a discussion among virtual community members (DeSanctis and Monge, 1999).
Individuals also take longer to form opinions about others on a computer medium as it takes longer to decipher social codes (Sproull and Kieser, 1986). In essence, the extent and type of cultural variations represented on the virtual team make a difference in the formation of trust.

There is risk involved in the interaction in a virtual community. Selling personal information for example could be classified as an opportunistic behavior. Assuming a false personality, marketing products and services, spamming, making jokes at members, and behaving in a manner that breaches the trust of the community members all fall under this category.
These traits are common in other types of communities too, but in the case of a virtual community, it is relatively easier to hide the intentions and accomplish such behavior by the crook and much harder for the victim to notice.

3. The Ingredients of Trust
In everyday life, trust between members of community develops by successful interaction (Blau, 1964; Gefen, 2000; Luhmann, 1979). In a virtual community trust is built through a number of mechanisms that are typical to the on line world. The responsiveness of other members of the community is essential for the trust to develop (Ridings et al, 2002) along with adherence to social norms. When members of online communities post a message, they subconsciously look for a reply to be posted by other members. In case of late or no response, or a response lacking in number, there is no successful interaction resulting in the reduction of mutual trust among members. If members regularly read what other post on the board, they contribute to building the trust. If others post personal information, they appear more friendly and less as strangers thus contribute to building trust. Personal information can also be provided in site profiles in the form of email address, age, gender, name or a personal problem and it may add the credibility of the member (ability virtue). This will make it easier for other members to form beliefs about following community standards and set of values (benevolence and integrity). Thus providing personal information also contributes to building trust among virtual community members (Riding et al, 2002).

Disposition of trust is the general willingness of people to depend on others to some extent (McKnight, Cummings, 1998) which has been found to be uniform across a range of situation and scenarios (Meyer et al, 1995). People do not know each other in the initial period of interaction with each other in a virtual community. Therefore, disposition of trust is also an important factor culminating in the building of trust among members. Empirical studies have found that disposition of trust is directly related to trust in a virtual environment (Gefen, 2000, Jarvenpaa, 1998). This is true in a virtual community (Ridings et al, 2002).

An honest behavior in a virtual community is the key for successful interaction among members. However, there is no legal framework to enforce appropriate conduct in virtual communities. The feeling of being part of a community and its membership may provide a possible way to enforce honest behavior. A trusted third party certification mechanism helps enhance honest behavior in virtual communities (Ba, 2001, Ba, Whinston, & Zhang, 2003). Although there are three trust building mechanisms in the virtual world, namely feedback, insurance/guarantee and escrow, extralegal framework if adopted, will be particularly useful in virtual communities. Community appreciation, gossip and reproach being part of the extralegal mechanism may serve to create trust as they do in regular social environment.

According to Ba, virtual communities may build trust through the sense of community (Ba, 2001). This is particularly relevant when there is time between the quid and the pro. If the concept of accountability is introduced, there will be more social pressure to adhere to the rules. AN example would be if the members of the community are held responsible for the actions of an offender. This approach might only work with a strong sense of community, and many virtual communities do have a strong sense of community participation among their members.

Another area which demands trust is the user privacy. Many virtual communities discuss issues related to personal topics, like legal issues, medical conditions, or occupations. The participating members may choose to be anonymous while taking part in discussions. However, this might have an impact on the sale of advertising space or products to users. The emphasis is then placed on the provision of user statistical data that involves demographics and email addresses, which is a trade off against the settings of user privacy. It may be viable for the virtual communities to incorporate procedural fairness to be seen by the members as a fair way of collecting personal data for statistical purpose.
Procedural fairness has been found to address the protection of personal privacy concerns and helps build trust that customers need for an organization for marketing purpose (Culnan & Armstrong, 1999).

4. Building Trust through Communication
Communication processes form the basic mechanisms that help enhance the trust. This is attributed to the fact that information carriage provides details about the personalities of virtual team members, helps in forming common goals, and aids in continued interaction through computer medium.

Communication among members is an essential characteristic of trust in a relationship (Kanter, 1994). The success of a relationship tends to suffer if there is a lack of communication among the community. The members need to constantly interact with each other to smooth out their differences, and form a smooth relationship free of kinks.

Since members need to collect evidence about other fellow members trustworthiness, communication is the only way that such a process is facilitated. It results in information asymmetry (Hart and Sauders, 1997)

Communication further develops trust among members because it provides the frame work for a continued interaction, from which members further solidify their links. Members tend to identify common interests and norms reinforcing a sense of trust.

4.1 Effect of Cultures in a Communication Process
The degree, to which the cultures of two parties communicating with each other are similar, has a bearing on the understanding of the conveyed message. The greater the differences in cultures, greater the difficulty in understanding the message. These cultural differences are more effective in the first two phases of the communication process when messages are assembled and transmitted and are then acquired by the receiver who interprets and responds to them (Gibson, 1996).

Messages also vary in nature with respect to the extent to which they contain contents based on facts rather than highly emotional material based in personal experiences and intuition (Glenn, Witmeyer, and Stevenson, 1977). This inference is based on the fact that cultures vary in the extent to which they lay emphasis on irrational thinking and communal values.

5. Future Directions
With basic understanding of trust in a virtual community, the future research may investigate multiple directions of this important ingredient in an ever evolving domain of virtual communities. It could be a possibility that the trust develops differently in different kind of communities. For example, the trust deficit faced by a virtual community interacting in the subject of prostate cancer may be different than the level of trust experienced by a virtual community discussing cricket as there are different attributes involved with the nature of subject being discussed/interacted with. The level of trust for an individual varies with his level of association with the community. This could be an area of investigation to quantify the level of trust. Variables such as race, age, gender, and culture may also influence trust and its development (Gefen, 2000b). Studies of virtual communities may provide more insight about the development of trust over a period of time.

6. Conclusion
With the advent of World Wide Web, virtual communities have evolved to be an effective medium for meaningful interaction by community members for the exchange of information. These venues also provide interactivity to website sponsors on the Internet. For virtual communities to grow, they ought to have conservation, which is derived from trust among community members. Trust in other member’s abilities is essential as well as in their benevolence and integrity. Trust has been found to be enhanced by member responsiveness, confiding personal information, and the disposition of trust by a member.

References

Ba, S. (2001). Establishing online trust through community responsibility system. Decision Support Systems, 31, 323-336.

Ba, S., Whinsonton, A. B., Zhang, H. (2003). Building trust in online auction markets through an economic incentive mechanism. Decision Support Systems, 35, 273-286.

Blau, P.M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Butler, J. K. (1991). Toward understanding and measuring conditions of trust: Evolution of a condition of trust inventory. Journal of Management, 17(3), 643-663.

Culnan, M.J., & Armstrong, P. K. (1999). Information privacy concerns, procedural fairness, and impersonal trust: An empirical investigation. Organization Science, 10(1), 104-115.

DeSanctics, G., and Monge, P.”Communication Processes for Virtual Organizations.” Organization Science, 1999, 10(6), 693-703.

Doney, P. M, J. P, Cannon (1997). An examination of the nature of trust in buyer-seller relationships. J. Marketing 61 (2), 35-51.

Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The social virtues & the creation of prosperity. New York: The Free Press.

Gibson, C. B.”DO You Hear What I Hear? A Framework for Reconciling Intercultural Communication Difficulties Arising from Cognitive Styles and Cultural Values,” In M Erez and P. C Early (Eds), New Perspectives on International Organizational Psychology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.

Gefen, D. (2000b). Gender differences in the perception and adoption of e-mail and computer-mediated communication media: A sociolinguistics approach. In A. Kent (Ed.), The encyclopaedia of library science. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Gefen, D., Karahanna, E., & Straub, D. W. (2003). Trust and TAM in online shopping: An integrated model. MIS Quarterly, 27(1), 51-90.

Glenn, E., Witmeyer, D., and Stevenson, K.” Cultural Styles of Persuasion.” International Journal of International Relations, 1977, 1, 52-56.

Hart, P., Saunders, C. Power and Trust: Critical Factors in the Adoption and Use of Electronic Data Interface. Organization Science, 1997, 8, 99.23-42

Hitz, S.R. (1984). Online communities: A case study of the office of the future. Norwood, N.J: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Hitz, S. R., & Wellman, B. (1997). Asynchronous learning networks as a virtual classroom. Communications of the ACM, 40(9), 44-49.

Kannan, P., K., A, Chang, A. B Whinston (2000). Electronics communities in e-business: Their role and issues. Inform. Systems Frontiers 1(4), 415-426.

Kanter, R.M. (1996). Collaborative Advantage: The Art of Alliances. Harvard business Review, 1994, 72(4), 96-98

Lee, F. S., D., Vogel, L. Moez (2003). Virtual community informatics: A review and research agenda. J. Inform. Tech. Theory Appl. 5(1), 47-61.

Preece, J. (2000). Online communities: Designing usability, supporting scalability. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK.

Ridings, C. M. D., Gefen B. Arinze, 2002.Some antecedents and effects of trust in virtual communities. Strategic Inform. Systems 11 3(4), 271-295.

Sproull, L., and kiesler, S (1986). Reducing Social Context Cues: Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication.” Management Science, 1986, 31 (11), 1492-1512.

Stockdale, R, M. Brovicka (2006). Developing an online business community: A travel industry case study. Proc 39th Hawaii Internat. Conf. System Sci.

Early Virtual Communities Amna's Conference Paper - Virtual Communities

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Written by tickets us open tennis about 4 months ago. Reply

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Written by CLOMIDONLINER about 5 months ago. Reply

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Written by Ayesha about 10 months ago. Reply

Can you throw some light on the reasons and impact of commercialization of virtual communities?
Written by Hillary Brook about 11 months ago. Reply

Looks like you did alot of digging. Keep on putting up more updates!
Written by li ying about 2 years ago. Reply

I remember when I was first exposed to the Internet, I trusted everyone online. However as I grow older, I will think twice before trusting them. I don’t know why I loses trust on them but maybe because when I was innocent and have not exposed to the real world as I am now.
Very interesting paper!
Written by 14379286 about 2 years ago. Reply

I totally agree with the the fact that virtual communities come into play as a result of common interest among individuals who wish to discuss them without geographical constraints coming into play. In your paper you discussed about trust as the most pivotal aspect in the ever growing virtual communities. I believe this indeed leaves a lot to desired as the levels of deception has always been on the increase ever since day one of virtual communities. One can only keep trusting if deception or misleading information is not prevalent on virtual communities. You mentioned about how different cultures can have negative on virtual communities, this is due to the fact that cultures different from place to place whereas on the virtual world people from different culture meet. Therefore thus create problems in the sense that things like expressions can have many different connotations in different cultures and that can cause problems and mistrust.
Written by alan_beazley about 2 years ago. Reply

Thank you for the interesting read Amna,

You argued within your paper that in order for the virtual communities of the World-Wide-Web to grow and thrive, trust was required not only in their member’s abilities to produce relevant communications but also in their integrity and benevolence. However, do you agree that the early virtual communities in the form of Usenet and newsgroups provided a space where individuals can fabricate and multiply their identity by being dishonest about aspects such as gender, sex, age, profession, ethnicity, their academic qualifications (Turkle, 1997a, p.158)? Due to their nature of Usenet and newsgroups, the cost of deception is relatively low, this is because the link between the offline world and relatively private spaces of the virtual community is weak (Donath, 1999).

The paper also argued that trust can still be formed by the frequency of your posts, the personal information within the posts and potentially a profile that displays member’s age, email, gender, name etc. But how can this information be validated if not for a face-to-face interaction in the offline world? I am contrasting this with the public, semi-public personal profiles found within Social Networking Services of present day such as; Facebook and MySpace? Because of their public nature and the visibility of personal information from your connections and greater social circles the cost of deception is high (Guillory & Hancock, 2009). This still however doesn’t guarantee 100% trust or validate the integrity of SNS members and a current example I will use is the story Nona Belomesoff who was recently found murdered in NSW bushland after meeting up with a person she met on Facebook whom she believed shared similar interests in camping (SMH / AAP, 2010). The point I am making is that deception played a significant part in the early virtual communities and is still prevalent now within the semi-public domain so other contributing factors besides trust like; user collaboration for personal or financial gain, self-exhibitionism or online fame may also play a role with conserving and growing virtual community on the web. My paper can be found here and argues how deception was rife within the MUDs and virtual communities of the World-Wide-Web, you might find it interesting to see if from another perspective.

http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2010/04/post-modern-identity-residing-within-the-realms-of-social-networking-services-a-recruiter-employers-perspective/

Kind regards,
Alan

References

Donath, J. (1999). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Communities in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge.

Guillory, J & Hancock, J(N.D). Online Social Networks as a Constraint to Deception in Online Resumes. Retrieved Mach 29, 2010, From
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/0/0/4/1/p300410_index.html

SMH & AAP. 15-05-2010. Man charged with murder over missing Facebook teen: Sydney Morning Herald online http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/man-charged-with-murder-over-missing-facebook-teen-20100515-v4w6.html (Access May 15, 2010)

Turkle, S (1997a). Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality. In S. Kiesler (Ed.), Culture of the Internet. Hilldale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Turkle, SB. (1997b). Multiple Subjectivity and Virtual Community at the End of the Freudian Century. Sociological Inquiry, 67(1).
Written by TessaG about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Amna,

Thank you so much for sharing your paper – especially since you were the only student in this category.

Even though my paper was posted in the identity stream, I feel there are still parallels.

My paper “Look at me not my chair: unmasking ability and identity online” argued the positive benefits which social communities and networks can have on the identity formation of people with a physical disability.

It is precisely the nature of the Internet as a medium of communication (ie lack of visual, auditory and other cues) which lends itself beautifully for a person with a physical disability to be seen as they really are. Not as a person with a physical disability but as a person who has a personality and the intelligence to share their talents and advice with others. This in turn leads to happiness, well-being and the formation of a fully functioning identity.

Your ideas on trust are vital to the sharing and support that occurs in social networks. SheilaM’s paper spoke at length about trust in virtual communities.

I really enjoyed reading about your research and agree with your closing statement about the fact that for social networks and communities to be successful and thrive, there needs to be a certain level of trust among it’s active members.

Thanks again,

Tessa
Written by Michelle R about 2 years ago. Reply

Fantastic work and your paper made for interesting reading. I have a question about cultural differences in regards to trust, during your study did you find that trust between different cultures is earned in different ways as opposed to relationships and trust built between those of the same culture. Also what role does time play in establishing trust, were there certain time frames in which trust had to be established with in internet communities?
Written by VC friend about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Anna, nice work – you might want to look at these papers here as well:

Design, implementation and evaluation of trust-supporting components in virtual communities for patients
by: J. M. Leimeister and W. Ebner and H. Krcmar
In: Journal of Management Information Systems JMIS , Vol. 21 , Nr. 4 (2005) , p. 101-135.

Do virtual communities matter for the social support of patients? Antecedents and effects of virtual relationships in online communities
by: J. M. Leimeister and K. Schweizer and S. Leimeister and H. Krcmar
In: Information Technology & People ITP , Vol. 21 , Nr. 4 (2008) , p. 350-374.
Written by jhiroberts about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Amna,

Firstly I must say good on you for choosing this stream, as i know when I saw it I thought no way am i going to even think about how to structure a paper linking back to Early Virtual communities.

I really enjoyed your paper, it was really easy to read, it flowed well and it fit 100% into the stream.

I really do agree with your statement that for virtual communities to grow the members of the community need to trust each other.

Congratulations on a great paper, and for choosing something different from the pack.

Cheers

Jhi

http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2010/04/facebook-and-the-demise-of-individual-privacy-%E2%80%93-a-flawed-assumption-or-serial-disregard/
Written by Chris K about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi it was a pleasure to read your “minority stream” paper. I liked the easy to read well researched structure of you paper.

While you discuss more from a historic point of view my paper is about the communities of the present and is called “Participation in forms of community shapes The Web 2.0″ I discuss more modern platforms where community is important to keep them running such as YouTube.

You are the only student whp chose the topic Early Virtual Communities. It seems like the numbers of peope who chose a certain topic is very comparable the trend in the Internet. Social Networks who are on the rise and still growing are the most chosen topic. Your topic which is the only historic one does not attract to many people to do research on. The Internet itself and the Web 2.0 are changing so quickly and the common Web 2.0 or digital native seems to be interested in what is up now and does not care to much about the past.
Written by Emily about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Amna, great paper! I like the way you draw attention to trust as an essential element of virtual communities. In discussions about the validity of virtual communities as an actual form of community, attributes such as co-location, a common way of life, and social interaction are often emphasised as integral to the nature of community ¹.

But after reading your paper and reflecting on my own experience of virtual communities, I believe that trust, along with other factors (such as common ties), is definitely one of the most important attributes of a community of any kind. Without an element of trust, meaningful interaction would be very difficult to achieve – and without meaningful interaction, things like social interaction and a common way of thinking are impossible. Thus, I think that the topic of your paper is a very relevant and important one.

You’ve said that “The greater the differences in cultures, greater the difficulty in understanding the message”, which is fairly true according to my personal experiences. Various academics have also confirmed this statement by pointing out that cultural factors still apply, whether the interaction is mediated electronically or not ². I find it quite interesting that you have mentioned the possible negative impact that differing culture can have on online communication; because it’s quite in contrast to the utopian “global village” that was talked about at the advent of the web.

My own paper discusses how aspects of one’s offline identity are inescapable when communicating online. In your paper, you’ve said that revealing personal information makes an individual “appear more friendly and less as strangers”. You’ve also mentioned that sharing significant amounts of content is necessary to create trust. Does this mean, then, that the more information about your offline identity you share, the more trusted you will be by the other members of your virtual community?

¹ Katz, J., Rice, R., Acord, S., Dasgupta, K., & David, K. (2004). Personal Mediated Communication and the Concept of Community Theory and Practice. In P. Kalbfleisch (Ed.), Communication and Community: Communication Yearbook 28 (pp. 315-371). Retrieved May 9, 2010, from http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/faculty/rrice/A80KatzRiceAcordDasguptaDavid2004.pdf

² McIlvenny, P. (1999). Avatars R Us? Discourses of Community and Embodiment in Intercultural Cyberspace. Intercultural Communication, 1. Retrieved May 9, 2010, from http://www.immi.se/intercultural/nr1/mcilvenny.htm
Written by Zohara Ibrahim about 2 years ago. Reply

According to your point here “in a social relationship, trust is an important ingredient. (Blau, 1964). Yes, i agree your point here, as everyone always used the internet for research, trust is are really important if you are very understand how does social networking work. however some of them are do not trust what they wrote on their profile if they looking for social relationship. sometimes is hard to believe someone account and anythng what does she or he wrote or post on profile. According to your point here “The multidimensional concept of trust has to do with the beliefs of skills/expertise of the trusted person have in a certain area. If you they have to do with beliefe and expertise of trusted person have a certain area why some of them broke up in social realtioship i mean not long lasting. Ability relates to the belief that the other person knows what he or she is discussing. Since virtual communities are concerned with focusing on a particular topic at one time, this trait is particularly relevant. Benevolence is concerned with the expectation that others would have a positive desire to do good to the person entrusted with the information. It is expected that the trustee would reciprocate with advice, help guidance and intent to support the ongoing discussion. for me i not easy to trust someone through social networking even in real life too is not easy for us to trust them, it depend on situition i think and depend on how do you treat each other in good way. anyway, good topic.
Written by PaulaB about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Amna,

A lots of thought went into your conference paper especially into trust and Internet. Most of us are brought up to trust and being trusted. I support your argument that “An honest behavior in a virtual community is the key for successful interaction among members”. however, we do no live in ideal world and neither is virtual world and we come across expreriencing mistrust and dishonesty. In real world these negatives are more transparent then in virtual world that physical clues are assisting in recognising the dishonesty etc in real world. Perhaps something like ‘banning’ from virtual world or community for xx months once the dishonesty is discovered in virtual community. Kind of penalty. I am certain for some not being in virtual world for a day would be an ultimate punishment….Of course these penalties would be difficult to manage that who is going to manage them in this huge cyber world….

cheers
Written by WendyL about 2 years ago. Reply

Thank you for an interesting paper.
I like how you have pointed out that even though the focus of our attention has changed trust still plays a major factor in virtual communities, “For example, the earliest virtual communities tended to focus on member’s social interests, many more recent virtual communities focus on member’s commercial interests (Kannan et al, 2000).”
In your conclusion you state that “For virtual communities to grow, they ought to have conservation, which is derived from trust among community members.” This statement may be true for some communities however if the community has come together to share information as a learning tool it may not stand true.
- Written by Amna about 2 years ago. Reply
  
  Thanks for your thoughts. In my opinion, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to conclude if the statement is true or otherwise since the lines between purposes for which the communities get together have a common factor and that is trust. In case of commercial platforms, we could relatively lay more stress on trust compared to other common interests as monetary gains are involved.
Written by Keith Law about 2 years ago. Reply

A Dichotomy of Trust in Virtual Communities
I liked your paper a great deal. My only criticism is that it may have been better classified in the Communities and Web2.0 Stream. Your analysis of trust is as relevant to modern technology as much if not more so than early virtual communities.

You say “many more recent virtual communities focus on member’s commercial interests (Kannan et al, 2000).”
In my paper The Relationship Economy I quote “Facebook and Linkedin and Twitter are toolboxes of things you can do but a community is a group of people with shared interests who interact on top of social networks. A community has to be based around something in the top half dozen things you are generally interested in.” (Follow your Art, 2010)

Trust is a key component in transactions both social and commercial. The fact that these communities develop around things that people really care about emphasise the importance of trust. In my paper I concluded:”We can conclude that business seeks to create value for community participants and by this create trust and a willingness to engage in commercial activities” It is this process of creating value that generates trust. If you have received helpful information before or a successful commercial transaction you rely on and trust the other party. All first on-line transactions both social and commercial tend to be tentative and cautious and often relying on real world supporting data.

I particularly like your comment: “The degree, to which the cultures of two parties communicating with each other are similar, has a bearing on the understanding of the conveyed message. The greater the differences in cultures, greater the difficulty in understanding the message. These cultural differences are more effective in the first two phases of the communication process when messages are assembled and transmitted and are then acquired by the receiver who interprets and responds to them (Gibson, 1996).”

It is just not culture in a nationalistic sense but culture in terms of an individual’s perspective and understanding of the medium of communication and the other party’s motivations and perspective. It is easy to offend someone without trying if simply the sender and receiver of a message have different frames of reference. Culture in this context can be defined by sex, age, religious belief and life experiences. The dangers of misunderstanding increase with asynchronous Internet communication as the feedback loop of the personal interfaces does not mediate the content that is there is an absence of body language.

WORKS CITED
Follow your Art. (2010, March). Nett# , pp. 26-32.
- Written by Amna about 2 years ago. Reply
  
  Thanks for your input on the subject. Looking at the nature of the topic being discussed, yes, the paper could have been part of the Conference Stream you suggested. I agree with you about your concept of culture to be understood in an individual’s perspective.
Written by Taraeta about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Amna

This paper was interesting reading especially in the aspect of trust. Whilst researching this paper did you find any differences in the levels of trust depending upon the strengths of the ties of community members? In particular the difference between strong and weak ties and the effect on trust.

Joinson, McKenna & Postmes (2007) state that, “Dense, strong, bonding ties create a community level framework for trust.” They do accept that strong ties are not necessarily a requirement for the formation of trust within a community but there must be an impact based on the weak ties that are also formed within a community and weak ties to allow for new information.

Taraeta

Joinson, A., McKenna, K., Postmes, T. & Reips, U. (Eds.) (2007) The Oxford handbook of Internet psychology. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
- Written by Amna about 2 years ago. Reply
  
  I found in my research that the levels of trust were defenitiely a function of community ties. However, trust deficit is highest in the beginning and tends to build as the ties become stronger with more interaction.
Written by Joshua Atlee about 2 years ago. Reply

Just regarding trust in virtual communities, this is quite a hard topic to place my finger upon because people can communicate inside a virtual community without trust but yes it does all depend on the agenda for e.g. the trust in a gaming forum and the trust within a elderly community forum would have differences and barriers placed around what anyone thinks of trust. Another good example is I’m a member of a forum which provides technical information regarding hardware and software relating to a topic which i enjoy reading and consuming information from people that like helping others and writing guides, but this community works in a different way even if you give to the forum you don’t always receive so this would be a trust issue that wouldn’t really exist no more. If i write guides and spend quality time i mean a whole day writing a guide to teach people things but i don’t get many replies in return i just have to accept that trust within the community of replying isn’t a factor I would rather give good advice and let people trust me rather than me trusting people will thank me in return.

You have a well presented paper, Trust comes in many forms but it’s not always incorporated into every virtual community let’s tie it back to my paper for e.g. in MMORPG’s there are a huge virtual community of people but everyone is inside a 3d virtual world so trust reflects just like in the real world offline, trust all depends upon the people inside the community and what trust it is for. Hope i make sense on this.
Written by Andrew Pettigrew about 2 years ago. Reply

Hi Amna,
It was good to see someone covering the papers from earlier times. I noted in your paper that “Individuals also take longer to form opinions about others on a computer medium as it takes longer to decipher social codes (Sproull and Kieser, 1986).” You might also like to another paper by Kieser and Sproull that dealt with the formation of opinions in face to face group communications vs. group e-mail communications. (Kiesler & Sproull, 1992) The 1992 paper found that e-mail communications were more prone to flaming and group members had greater difficulty in forming a consensus of opinion.

When considering the whole argument of trust of Internet groups, you seemed to focus on the trust of the individual. I may have missed it, but did you consider the opinion of the masses? Rather than just trusting the individual, what about the opinion of the masses? Posing a question to a forum or newsgroup you are posing a question to the masses and this often results in numerous member answers. Buy reading a variety of responses you’ll develop a consensus of opinions. You can then discount those with extreme opinions at either end of the scale and focus on the majority. So rather than just trusting the opinion of the individual as you might do in face-to-face communications, when questions are posed to online groups this allows one to conduct group research of the masses and a find suitable solution.

Today the power of peer reviews and endorsement of products is the latest buzz in social marketing. Many shop online websites now include customer reviews on their products, this allows potential customers to make more informed choices about the ownership experience. With multiple reviews on a product you don’t need to trust the opinion of the individual but rather the opinion of the masses.

Kiesler, S., & Sproull, L. (1992). Group decision making and communication technology. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WP2-4CYG1YG-32/2/12219e6cec020c4b58aa175788195318
Written by Freedog about 2 years ago. Reply

Does anyone know where I can find information on the exponential growth of virtual community participation?

“These communities and the accompanying research have recorded exponential growth with the advent of the World Wide Web”

This didn’t have a citation for it! I am writing a paper on culture and community dynamics of a forum community and I am having trouble finding a study that shows evidence for the growth of participation.
- Written by Amna about 2 years ago. Reply
  
  Virtual community is a phenomenon in itself attributed to www. Since the web has grown exponentially over the last decade, so has the interest in these communities as more and more people are joining in to experience the interaction in the virtual space. Blogging in the recent US Presendentail election is a case in example where peolple participated in mass numbers to have an impact on the Presedential Campaign( Meraz, Sharon. Conference Papers — International Communication Association, 2006 Annual Meeting, p1-38, 38p Using Blogs to Extend the Public Sphere? Data Minng the John Kerry Candidate Blog for Networked Community structure Dynamics”). E-Commerce is blooming where eBay is a case in example. There are numerous sites that could be categorised under vistual communities. Face Book has record number of members grwon exponentially over recent years.
Written by Belindam about 2 years ago. Reply

This is a well argued and thought-provoking paper on the nature of trust-relationships on the Internet. I was particularly interested in the differences in the way such relationships are formed online and offline.

I feel, the main differences lay in the difference between written and spoken communication. It is often difficult to convey tone in writing such as sarcasm or irony. This can lead to misunderstanding, particularly when people don’t know each other well. If people return to blogs or message boards regularly, others users learn to recognise their patterns and may even learn about their lives and thereby forming bonds. This relates to a another paper I read in Identities by Emily Murphy ‘Virtual is Real: The Relationship Between Online and Offline Identity’. She argued online identities are informed by people’s existing social connections, as well as their ordinary lives and experiences.

I was reminded of a blog I read recently, in which one user attacked another for her religious beliefs. Other users were quick to come to her defence, by pointing out that her beliefs were well known within the group and that her opinions were usually thoughtful and well-considered.
Written by BromwichR about 2 years ago. Reply

How trust is managed, enforced and resolved will/has become a critical issue in the online envrionment. Without some form of enforcement and resolution mechanism to expose and remove fraudulent persona and activities, the level of trust will be eroded, resulting in an impaired ability to conduct activities so common online now.
Written by alio about 2 years ago. Reply

I think what you say about the trade off between privacy settings and data collection is interesting. It seems likely that a company which provides the server space for free to a community is likely to be expecting something in return.

The ability to collect and collate user data offers the provider more efficient ways to target marketing and also gives them a product (information about users) that they can sell to third parties. (Hirst & Harrison 2007, p.286)

Some users, aware of the practice of data mining, are reluctant to provide detailed profile information. This means that others have less information to base their judgements on, how does this effect trust?

REF:
Hirst, Martin and Harrison, John 2006, Communication and new media: from broadcast to narrowcast, Oxford University Press
Written by Michael N about 2 years ago. Reply

I like the fact you have put up future directions for research. This is a good arguement which selects a large range of useful literature on the topic. I was also surprised and did not know that some companies will not sponser a virtual community if people do not leave their personal details.
Written by Jordannaepp about 2 years ago. Reply

Its interesting to note as well that levels of trust may differ between new Internet users (newbies) and those with more experience and knowledge of social online interaction. That perhaps the victims of virtual crimes may be a little too trusting or not as skeptical. Or perhaps the issue of trust online does not even occur to them in the first place.
I like that you chose to include the point of view of the commercial companies and how non-trust could affect their business online. It opens the door to questions about the validity of SEO surveys and web usage statistics; if people are not being truthful about their identities due to trust issues, how much faith can we place in the results of such data?

Comment Pages:

Online Conference on Networks and Communities

A Dichotomy of Trust in Virtual Communities

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