SIG Officers

  • Chair: Charalampos Z. Patrikakis, University of West Attica, Greece
  • Co-Chair: Agata Gurzawska, Trilateral Research, Ireland
  • Senior Advisor: Sorin A. Matei, Purdue University, USA

SIG Scope

The Trustworthiness on Social Networks interest group will foster trust-focused research on social networks. It will identify the trust vulnerabilities and opportunities in existing and future social networking technologies. It will also examine the design and usage factors that influence societal perceptions of trustworthiness of social networking platforms and of their business models. Particular attention will be paid to regulation, including both specific measures to foster trustworthiness and guardrails to prevent unjustified controls of social media in the name of trustworthiness. The group will seek partnerships with commercial, funding, research, and regulatory bodies that may provide input and feedback on the group’s activities. The goal of the collaboration is to create a framework for trustworthiness in social networks through science-societal co-creation. This Interest Group combines multidisciplinary experts, including social scientists, regulatory experts, and engineering and design innovators. A core research aim is to synthesize existing knowledge into guidance and research agendas that may lead to enhanced trustworthiness in usage and content production. The group will propose and evaluate tools and methods for enhancing trust in social networks. Finally, it will expand on the results of research projects such as HORIZON 2020 EUNOMIA, HORIZON EUROPE project VERITY and Trust First.

SIG Topics

The main topics of this interdisciplinary interest group are the following, but not limited to:

  • Co-creation of technical and regulatory frameworks for generating trustworthiness in collaboration with commercial, regulatory, funding, and educational institutions
  • Evaluation of strategies and tools for increasing trust in social networks
  • Social Network Analysis to identify variables that affect public’s trust
  • Creation of expert clusters that can contribute to the extraction and dissemination of findings
  • Investigation of AI algorithms that are focused on trustworthiness in social networks
  • Research οn specific scientific topics, such as pandemic and environmental issues.