Providing trustworthy advice online: An exploratory study on the potential of discursive psychology in trust research

Abstract

The Internet serves as an important source for people who are looking for information and advice from peers. Within search behavior a central role is reserved for trust; it will guide the decision to participate online, to share experiences or to pick up information. This paper explores insights from discursive psychology as a potentially interesting approach for trust research in online peer environments. This allows for a certain shift of focus. Instead of looking at the information seeker, we focus on the information provider: How does he try to present himself – and the information sources he refers to in his arguments – as trustworthy and authoritative? Within this theoretical perspective trust is being studied as something that is highly negotiable depending on context and the effect the information provider tries to achieve. Throughout the paper conversation fragments - collected from an online forum on home-improvement - are incorporated to clarify and illustrate some central concepts of discursive psychology.