[Air-L] Call for papers - Amsterdam Trust Summit

[Balazs Bodo]

Apologies for cross-posting, i hope this might be interesting for this
group!



Call for Papers – Amsterdam Trust Summit 2025

Don’t miss the chance to contribute to our annual Amsterdam Trust Summit,
hosted by the Trust in the Digital Society Research Priority Area, on
August 28–29, 2025!

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.

Contributions are welcome for various tracks:

- Theories of trust and distrust in the digital society
- Trust dynamics around emerging technologies
- Individual trusting behaviors and their impacts
- Trustworthiness safeguards of socio-technical infrastructures
- Narratives of trust and distrust in popular culture
- Innovative methods for studying trust in the information age

Submit your work and learn more here:
https://digitaltrust.uva.nl/amsterdam-trust-summit-2025/call-for-papers-ats-2025.html

Deadline for submissions: February 28, 2025



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?



--------------------------

Balazs Bodo



Professor of Information Law and Policy, with special emphasis on
Technology Governance

Institute for Information Law <https://www.ivir.nl/>



Program Director

Advanced LLM in Technology Governance
<https://www.uva.nl/en/programmes/advanced-masters/technology-governance/technology-governance.html>



University of Amsterdam





*Latest publications
<https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/b/o/b.bodo/b.bodo.html>:*



Bodó, B., & Weigl, L. (in press). The frameworks of trust and trustlessness
around algorithmic control technologies: A lost sense of community
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4861198>. In J.
Goossens, & E. Keymolen (Eds.), Public Governance and Emerging
Technologies: Values, Trust, and Compliance by Design