Integrating privacy and trust in voting advice applications

Abstract

Due to the privacy risks that citizens are exposed to while using online platforms, this research focuses on privacy and trust issues in the field of e-Democracy, particularly in voting advice applications (VAAs). After a literature review, a VAA profile privacy framework will be introduced. Within this framework each citizen will be able to manage her/his political profile's privacy settings according to her/his personal preferences regarding information disclosure. By conducting an experiment based on real data collected from an online survey, the data sensitivity and visibility inherent to the VAA will be identified. Additionally, the privacy preferences of citizens have been clustered and classified according to their degree of openness. Moreover, as the core of the VAA, a recommender engine will be proposed to embed a trust network and privacy preferences in the recommendation process. This will preserve the VAA from unreliable users, as well as take into account citizens wishes related to personal privacy within the platform. Furthermore, conclusions and outlook for the future work will be discussed.