A Framework to Support the Trust Process

in News and Social Media

SW4SG 2018

CARLOS LAUFER
DANIEL SCHWABE

Oct. 2018 © Daniel Schwabe 1

What is trust?
Social Media/News = a world of Agents.
Trust as a social process.
Some properties of trust
• It only matters when some action is involved (Castelfranchi’s delegation)
• It is binary! You can’t “half trust”, because you can’t “half act”
• It is held towards some agent regarding some “matter”.

Gerck: ❝ Trust is knowledge-based reliance on received information❞.

• Models of Trust x Trust Models

Oct. 2018 © Daniel Schwabe 2

Trust Process
Data/Information

Metada
Trusted
Trust Process
Data/Information
Context

Policies

Action

Agent

Junho 2018 © Daniel Schwabe

Supporting the Trust Process
Facts -> Claims
Agent A makes Claim C containing statements Si, possibly with respective
sources Sr(Si).
Nanopublications

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Provenance
Primary Souce, direct observation (?)
Secondary Source
◦ Trust source
◦ Trust given provenance
◦ Multiple secondary sources

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Claim checking
A dispute of narratives!
Examples: X Makes Claim A with Facts FAi with respective sources So(FAi).
Each FAi may have supporting docs Supj(FAi)
• Claim A: FA1“Brasilia is the capital of Brazil” made by X: “Federal District Enactment
Act”. Since you trust the Law (X), you accept that Claim A is true. This is typically the
case of “official” documents.
• Claim A: FA1 “Brasilia is the capital of Brazil” made by Daniel, supported by the fact
that the same Claim A is made by Sup1(FA1): “issue of the Federal Gazette with
reference to Brasilia’s creation”. You don’t trust Daniel, but since you trust the
Federal Gazette (Sup1(FA1): ), you accept that Claim A is true.
• Claim A: FA1 “Brasilia is the capital of Brazil” made by Daniel, supported by the fact
that the same Claim A is made by Sup1(FA1): “issue of the Federal Gazette with
reference to Brasilia’s creation”. You don’t trust either. Find another doc from a
trusted source for the same claim.
• Claim A: FA1 “Rio de Janeiro is the capital of Brazil”. You make claim Claim B: FB1
“Brasilia is the capital of Brazil”, supported by the fact that the same Claim B is made
by Sup1(FB1): “Federal District Enactment Act”. Since you trust the Federal Gazette
(So(FB1), you accept that Claim B is true, and since Brazil cannot simultaneously have
two different cities as its capital, Claim A is false.

Oct. 2018 © Daniel Schwabe 6

Claim Check - Example
Claim A:
FA1: “Video X (frame shown in the story) shows the rescue of boys in
the cave in Thailand”
FA2: “This is why they were sedated”. Source: Whatsapp (?)

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Claim Check – Example (cont.)
Claim B:
FB1: “Video X was posted on 20/06/2014 on You Tube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIBoZylISbg#action=share by
Daniel Penez, for Spéléo Secours Français. Since the images are the
same, and the original video is much older (according to trusted
So(FB1),YouTube), Video X cannot be a video of that rescue in
Thailand.
FB2: “The boys were given anxiolytics, and were awake during the
whole route”, source So(FB2):Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha,
support Sup1(FB2): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-
07-10/urgent-thai-official-rescued-boys-generally-healthy-and-
smiling. Since we believe Bloomberg News (So(Sup1(FB2)) is reporting
the Prime Minister’s words accurately, FB2 contradicts FA2, which is
deemed false.

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Questions for discussion
§ Does additional info make a difference?
§ ”How politics makes us stupid”
• (http://www.vox.com/2014/4/6/5556462/brain-dead-how-politics-makes-us-stupid)
• Dan Kahan, ”The Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm”, Emerging Trends in Social
Sciences, 2017
§ People do change positions
• (Nyhan and Reifer, ” Do People Actually Learn From Fact-Checking? Evidence from a
longitudinal study during the 2014 campaign”,
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fact-checking-effects.pdf)

§ Check the ”fact checkers”?

• Petter Bae Brandtzaeg & Asbjørn Følstad, ”Trust and Distrust in Online Fact-Checking
Services”, Communications of the ACM, forthcoming

§ Fake checkers!

Junho 2018 © Daniel Schwabe 9

Challenges

Support for the trust process

Formulation of trust policies
Support for narratives and “argumentation”

Junho 2018 © Daniel Schwabe 10

Thanks!
dschwabe@inf.puc-rio.br

Oct. 2018 © Daniel Schwabe 11