Towards a Computational Model of Information Trust

Information has been an essential element in the development of collaborative and cooperative models. From decision making to the attainment of varying goals, people have been relatively adept at making judgments about the trustworthiness of information, based on knowledge and understanding of a normative model of information. However, recent events, for example in elections and referenda, have stretched the ability of people to be able to measure the veracity and trustworthiness of information online. The result has been an erosion of trust in information online, its source, its value and the ability to objectively determine the trustworthiness of a piece of information, a situation made more complex by social networks, since social media have made the spread of (potentially untrustworthy) information easier and faster. We believe that this exacerbated the need for assisting humans in their judgment of the trustworthiness of information. We have begun working on a social cognitive construct: a trust model for information. In this paper we outline the problems and the beginnings of our trust model and highlight future work.