Trust and online media is a big topic no…
Trust and online media is a big topic nowadays. I’m running a research on the communication- and business dimensions of trust in online media (more on http://www.themashazine.com/trust-exchange ), but I’m especially looking for a community to discuss the philosophical dimensions of trust.
Some first questions and thoughts I came up with:
What do you talk of, when you talk of trust?
* Do you have a social, a political, a philosophical approach?
* Is trust bound to freedom, can you only trust when you are free to do so?
* If you don’t have another option than to trust – does this turn trust into hope? – You don’t have a choice, so you just hope that everything will turn out fine.
* What’s the relation of trust and power? we want to trust the powerful, because they could harm us; we want to trust in that they don’t. Do we need the trust of the weak? Does trust turn the weak into powerful ones: If they need to be trusted, if we need them to trust us – that means they are too powerful to be forced? Is this a part of the nature of trust that turns trust into one of the reasons of censorship: Because trust could lead to a shift of power, you have to avoid it as good as you can.
* What’s the relation between trust, freedom and attention? You can distrust me, you can tell others not to trust me – but by which means and in how far can you extend the effects of your opinion, convince other people? Give me a bad rating, if you can (eg on ebay) – are you sure it does not affect you at the end? You can even declare me public enemy, it might kill my reputation on one market, but it might be the most efficient PR I ever head in the rest of the world…
And after all: Why do almost all of us (at least officially) acknowledge that trust is simply a great thing?