Social approaches to trust-building in Web technologies

Trust is one of the most important elements in agents' relations: there is no cooperation (and ultimately no society) without this original core of trustworthiness towards a partner. In this article we focus on trust within technology-based environments, a subject which has been addressed by several disciplines and from several perspectives. Classical approaches to trust-building are presented here briefly: trust nourished by technological security; trust based on a rigid organization of cooperation; trust provided by a trusted third party and so on. We show that online trust or, more generally, trust in a technical environment, can only be nourished by approaches that are able to integrate cognitive and social elements in a strong way. More precisely, we propose a "paradigm shift" based on an extensive use of communality, reputation and over-help. We also suggest that it is important to study the role of familiarity and habit as one of the factors that could facilitate the presence of trust in a community of users.