Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2010), "Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet", Library Review, Vol. 59 No. 6, pp. 476-478. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242531011054002

If I were to tell you that this book deals with the truth‐lies paradox of the internet, you would know instantly that it both dealt with a topical issue and took a social science research stance. Tim Berners‐Lee, no less, spoke recently about the way the web can be used to spread disinformation, and we already know how close science and rumour can be, and how politics can be replaced by mere political communication. In such a world of mirrors and misrepresentations, therefore, it is understandable for serious academic writers and lecturers to examine subjects like truth and trust.

In fact, everywhere, in universities good and less good, research at all levels from post‐doc to student work, has turned with a voracious appetite to the research opportunities arising from the ways in which people use social networking sites and weblogs, resist scams and cyber‐stalker, engage in online romance, and create and exploit virtual identities. Whitty (Nottingham Trent University) and Joinson (University of Bath) have contributed substantially to this work, Whitty on the presentation of self‐online (above all by gender) and Joinson on self‐disclosure and deception online. Much of their work is repackaged here in the context of wider research. It is a short book with 20 pages of references at the end. The text cites the research constantly, making it a very useful introductory guide to the field, above all for students, and particularly for students shifting gear from bog‐standard “what is the internet?” types of questions to more probing issues of identity, authenticity, confidentiality, and online research procedures and ethics.

A quick snapshot of contents will help readers of this review to assess whether to buy it and how to use it. The gist is that truth and trust online have “good” and “bad” implications (though the authors never get that heavy morally, though come close on surveillance). The good is where online spaces allow people to get support and advice, to share knowledge and self‐disclose (and even get counselling), and, where this process can be trusted, all is well. The bad is where people misrepresent themselves and prey on the vulnerable – scams, cons, cyber‐stalking and harassment, revenge attacks, online cybersexual infidelities that lead to offline ones, and deception on dating sites. Yet even then we're not children – we look for contextual cues online, just as we do face‐to‐face, and judge (often quite effectively) whether a site can be trusted. Whitty and Joinson draw on research to identify three key criteria here – design, content, and relationship management.

The paradox kicks in time and time again – for all our familiarity and experience online, lies keep being told (some may be white lies, like telling an online dating site you're younger than you are or that you earn more than you do) and scams recur (beguiling some victims to part with large sums of money). For all that, however, self‐disclosure and trusting‐ness don't only persist – they increase, statistically at least because internet technology is more and more pervasive. There is, too, a human urge to self‐disclose, above all in lean media setting (rich ones, like face‐to‐face encounters, are rich in social cues and these make deception harder), to explore different versions of the self. This urge succeeds, arguably, because we think we're talking to strangers under conditions of anonymity (like confessional encounters with people on holiday – we think we won't see them ever again). In many cases, we trust the online environment: eBay and Facebook are good examples of such trust.

Technological measures to ensure security, filtering and legal measures over spam and scams and the rest, are noted in, and by, the book but these are not its major concern: readers with an interest in them will have to go elsewhere. Research theory and practice underlies the texture of the book not only in the form of regularly cited articles (a useful conspectus of such items, above all for anyone starting research and with access to a good academic/research library) but also in terms of ideas (research methodologies being used currently, ethical issues worth thinking through if your project is to be vetted by a research ethics committee), although its emphasis is on the issues. There are times when it looks like a reprise of student lectures, with definitions and quotations presented prosaically, and some chapters (like one of online counselling) look cobbled together for the purposes of having a book rather than an article. That whole professional side of online work deserves taking out and developing independently.

That said, what we have here is a quick read and a useful introduction to some recent research into truth and trust online. It will sell well for student courses and is likely to be bought in multiple copies by academic libraries, though don't buy too many because such material obsolesces quickly. It is also highly student‐centric, making it, in a truly ironic postmodern sense, a reflection of its age – that of consumerist higher education and the ongoing search for the authentic self in a world of simulation. Part of the paradox about truth and trust is that, in a very real way, the internet has not changed the motivations and interpretations of social interactions where trust and deception have always existed. Whitty and Joinson conclude by suggesting that online developments are likely to make the truth‐trust paradox sharper still. Admirably they take no earnest moral position of their own on such trends, steering clear of the dogmatisms of some theologically inspired critiques of the internet; even so, it is, ultimately, well‐nigh impossible to pin down exactly where they stand on it all.