Call for papers

In recent years trust has become one of the central concepts in the digital society. On the one hand, the trustworthiness of our information infrastructures, such as platforms, AI, encrypted communications emerged as a central concern. On the other hand, trust relations in the digital society, such as trust in expertise, science, news, or public institutions have been fundamentally disrupted.

We are at a critical juncture, where these two challenges meet. There is no rightly vested trust in the digital society without trustworthy information-communication technologies. The Amsterdam Trust Summit invites researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and activists to come together and start building a comprehensive account of the trust dynamics in the digital society.

Trust is the latest shared societal resource to be disrupted by digital innovation on a global scale. We see a growing distrust in institutions, practices, professions which were highly trusted before. More and more people have less confidence than before in journalism, science, vaccines, schools and universities, otherwise fair and reliable public institutions. Political polarization creates tensions in interpersonal trust relations, and sometimes tear friendships, and even families apart. While skepticism and distrust can also be understood as liberal democratic virtues, online they are all too often subject to ‘weaponization’ at the hands of trolls, online influencers, lying politicians and sock puppet accounts connected to authoritarian state sponsored disinformation campaigns. In online environments, where outrage often leads to higher levels of 'engagement', these dynamics feed into new ‘coalitions of distrust’ forming across and between different groups united by their shared antagonism of 'the mainstream'. On the other end of the spectrum, we also see an increase of ‘overconfidence’ in untrustworthy actors. Throughout history, people have often placed trust in the wrong hands, but what distinguishes the present is the scale at which this occurs online, where accountability is frequently lacking. The rise of the sharing economy has made it common to trust strangers with our homes, cars, and personal belongings, often without fully considering the risks involved. Similarly, the growing presence of generative AI has led many to trust the output of these systems without hesitation in their daily lives. Trust is fluid, and there are just too many opportunities for it to flow into the wrong places: the untrustworthy seem to be increasingly trusted, while the trustworthy aren’t.

In each case we may be facing a slightly different formulation of the same fundamental questions. First: what makes these new digital innovations (un)trustworthy? What mix of regulation, transparency, accountability, oversights, technical design, business models will provide the greatest confidence that our new digital infrastructures can deliver on their promises, while keeping the best interest of their users and of the society in mind?

Second, how does digital innovation shape trust in the digital society? What are the dynamics that shape trust relations vis-à-vis other people, institutions, technologies, etc.? How do the different components of trust change and transform due to digitization: the circumstances of the one who trusts, the characteristics of the one to be trusted, the environment in which trust emerges (or not).

Third, what are the (unintended) consequences of the disruption of trust relations and the emergence of these new trust mediators to individuals, organizations, and society more broadly? And what may be effective pathways to, on the one hand, leverage the benefits of some of these developments while, on the other hand, addressing the risks and the issues that they bring?

The University of Amsterdam established a Research Priority Area to study these questions. The Trust in the Digital Society announces its inaugural international conference, the Amsterdam Trust Summit to convene trust researchers and trust professionals.

Submission Guidelines

This is an interdisciplinary conference, and we welcome submissions from a wide range of academic fields. We encourage contributions from, but not limited to, the disciplines of law, sociology, political science, experimental economics, communication science, media studies, computer science, and related areas.

We invite submission and proposals in various formats:

• Extended abstracts (max. 1500 words, excl. references)
• Full papers (max. 10000 words, incl. references)
• Position papers (max. 1500 words, excl. references)
• Round table proposals (max. 500 words, excl. references, with a title, and max. 5 participants)
• Workshop proposals (max. 500 words, excl. references, with a title and expected workshop size)
• Hackathons (max. 500 words, excl. references, with a title)

Please indicate which type of format you would like to submit on your document.

Please submit your document in either Word or PDF, with references in APA format (7^th Edition).

We aim to invite selected abstracts for publication in a dedicated special issue of a leading journal. We thus encourage participants to submit full drafts for consideration by the organizers. If you would like your paper to be considered for publication, kindly explicitly indicate your interest.

Deadline for submissions: February 28, 2025

Tracks

A: Theories of trust and distrust in the digital society

• Theoretical and empirical work on technology-related risks, uncertainties harms as well as benefits and new dynamics
• Theoretical and empirical work on new models of trust and distrust in and by digital technology

B: Trust dynamics around emerging technologies

• specific technologies, such as AI, platforms, self-driving cars, blockchains, etc.
• various societal domains, such as journalism, science, the justice system, education system, etc.
• economic transactions: labor, finance, supply chains, etc.
• various institutions: the state, businesses, civil society organizations
• interpersonal relations
• epistemic frameworks, such as polarization, mis/disinformation, the rise of alternative sources of knowledge and authority

C: Individual trusting behaviors and impacts around technology

• The antecedents, processes, and consequences of trusting behavior vis-à-vis technology
• Shifts in trust behaviors through technology mediated relations

D: Trustworthiness safeguards of socio-technical infrastructures

• Trustworthiness and regulation
• Self-regulation, trust and safety teams
• Technical designs and architectures of trustworthiness
• Trustworthiness by markets and competition

E: Narratives of trust and distrust in popular culture

• Trust and distrust in media, social media conversations
• Conspiracy thinking and the prevalence of conspiracy theories
• The rise and impact of fake news
• Misinformation and disinformation in (social) media content

F: Methods of studying trust in the information age

• Quantitative trust research, including surveys and questionnaires, experiments, statistical modelling, network analysis, content analysis, network modeling, time series analysis, computational methods (textual, audiovisual)
• Qualitative trust research, including interviews, case studies, ethnography, qualitative content analysis, think aloud studies
• Interdisciplinary approaches to study trust in the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, communication science, neuroscience, economics etc.

Details

Dates and time: 28 and 29 August 2025

Location: Amsterdam + Online

Registration fees: The Amsterdam Trust Summit will ensure that there will be no financial hurdles for scholars from lower-middle-income countries, scholars at risk, and scholars in precarious positions without access to funding.