abstract: A myriad of social media services are emerging in recent years that allow people to communicate and express themselves conveniently and easily. The pervasive use of social media generates massive data at an unprecedented rate. It becomes increasingly difficult for online users to find relevant information or, in other words, exacerbates the information overload problem. Meanwhile, users in social media can be both passive content consumers and active content producers, causing the quality of user-generated content can vary dramatically from excellence to abuse or spam, which results in a problem of information credibility. Trust, providing evidence about with whom users can trust to share information and from whom users can accept information without additional verification, plays a crucial role in helping online users collect relevant and reliable information. It has been proven to be an effective way to mitigate information overload and credibility problems and has attracted increasing attention. As the conceptual counterpart of trust, distrust could be as important as trust and its value has been widely recognized by social sciences in the physical world. However, little attention is paid on distrust in social media. Social media differs from the physical world - (1) its data is passively observed, large-scale, incomplete, noisy and embedded with rich heterogeneous sources; and (2) distrust is generally unavailable in social media. These unique properties of social media present novel challenges for computing distrust in social media: (1) passively observed social media data does not provide necessary information social scientists use to understand distrust, how can I understand distrust in social media? (2) distrust is usually invisible in social media, how can I make invisible distrust visible by leveraging unique properties of social media data? and (3) little is known about distrust and its role in social media applications, how can distrust help make difference in social media applications? The chief objective of this dissertation is to figure out solutions to these challenges via innovative research and novel methods. In particular, computational tasks are designed to {\it understand distrust}, a innovative task, i.e., {\it predicting distrust} is proposed with novel frameworks to make invisible distrust visible, and principled approaches are develop to {\it apply distrust} in social media applications. Since distrust is a special type of negative links, I demonstrate the generalization of properties and algorithms of distrust to negative links, i.e., {\it generalizing findings of distrust}, which greatly expands the boundaries of research of distrust and largely broadens its applications in social media. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2015

We can observe a well-documented decline of trust levels in Western societies: from the reputation of political representatives as being "not trustworthy" to the rise of anti-system-oriented populist parties. Yet the implications of different forms of distrust for a society and democratic institutions have been theorized in conflicting ways so far. In order to illuminate existing inconsistencies in social and democratic theory, this article addresses two research questions: What are the implications of different manifestations of distrust for the acceptance of democracy and democratic institutions? How do different forms of distrust affect the motivation to become engaged in democratic decision-making and in civil society institutions? Taking empirical evidence from 25 focus groups in Germany, our findings show that growing social divisions affect the role distrust plays for political interest representation of social groups and for the acceptance of liberal representative democracy.

This thesis defends an account of what it is to trust other people, and what gives matters of trust a characteristic interpersonal or normative importance to us. Trust is an attitude of the trust stance; a more general attitude we take toward others in matters of trust, that includes distrust. Matters of trust are situations we trust/distrust others in. I put forward an account of the trust stance, that explains why matters of trust have interpersonal importance to us. Chapter 1 introduces the key questions to be addressed by the account. I outline how trust can be tied to specific actions, but can also be a general attitude we have about a person, or people. I set out how trust is standardly conceived as an anticipatory/predictive attitude, that also involves interpersonal import. That import is glimpsed in the possibility of betrayal by those we trust, and I point toward existing accounts of betrayal. I present arguments against accounts of trust that take it to be purely predictive, i.e. those of the rational choice/game-theoretic tradition. Chapter 2 introduces the dominant philosophical view of trust, which holds that to trust is to rely on another, such that we can be betrayed by her. I call this the Reliance plus (REL+) view. I offer a critical overview of three prominent REL+ accounts, from Baier (1986), Holton (1994), and Hawley (2014). I illustrate how an account of distrust that Hawley endorses, of betrayable non-reliance on another, results from REL+. Chapter 3 presents an argument against REL+. I argue it cannot allow for the possibility of uncertainty about another, where uncertainty is a trust stance attitude between trust and distrust. Uncertainty is possible, so REL+ must be false. Chapter 4 presents another argument against REL+. The argument is that distrust cannot be a product of non-reliance, so REL+ must be false. I argue that REL+ fails because it ignores a distinction between two senses of 'trust': an activity of reliance, and a mental state of assurance. Distrust is only an attitude of wariness, opposed to assurance, rather than reliance. I defend the claim that reliance requires practical dependence on what is relied on. I build upon in this claim in the next chapter. Chapter 5 defends an account of reliance as an activity, in support of the active/stative trust distinction from chapter 4. I evaluate Smith's (2010) account of reliance, which endorses practical dependence. I argue that Smith's account faces a dilemma, showing the account is either incomplete, or that it renders reliance impossible. I defend a 'role placement in activity' account of reliance, that avoids the dilemma. Chapter 6 defends a distinction between reliance and dependence in general. Where reliance involves practical dependence, I argue that dependence is a matter of fundamentally needing something as a matter of functioning and wellbeing. My account of the concept comes into play in chapter 8. Chapter 7 sets out a more detailed account of the stative trust stance attitudes. I use the active/stative distinction to address a question over whether we can trust voluntarily, and the relation between specific and general trust. I set out the concept of a situational vulnerability, that the trust stance attitudes are about, and which can result from reliance on another. I defend an account of the trust stance as a rolling schema: an anticipatory framework that involves interpreting another's motives toward us, in respect of situations of vulnerability. Chapter 8 argues that the interpersonal import of trust is a product of our felt need for secure attachments to individuals, and to belong to a group. I explain the relationship between social dependence on others and betrayability.

Atheists are some of the least liked people in the world. Previous research has demonstrated that in most stigmatized groups, increased prevalence of the group increases prejudice towards the group. However, the opposite has been found with atheists- increased perceived prevalence decreases prejudice towards atheists. One post-hoc explanation provided for this difference is that since atheists are easily concealable and unorganized as a group, their greater prevalence may not be perceived as a threat. In the present thesis, I 1) attempted to replicate the existing finding that perceived increased prevalence would increase trust towards atheists and 2) directly tested the hypothesis that if atheist groups are presented as collectively powerful and coherent, increased prevalence will no longer decrease anti-atheist prejudice. I did not find support for the hypothesis that prevalence increases atheist trust, nor did I find support for my hypotheses that power and cohesion would manipulate distrust. Atheist prejudice is still pervasive, however, prejudice against atheists may be changing.

In this paper I have conducted an analysis to critically examine survey questionnaire forms used in political research to measure trust and distrust. During the first step of the analysis I aimed to identify how the concepts where used in the forms. The second step involved examining if it was possible to relate the questions and items to five theoretical assumptions based on theories of trust (and distrust). The third step was to examine the quality of the forms, in relation to survey and questionnaire designs. The results of the analysis showed that the institutes that conduct the studies tended to use similar questions to measure trust. Some of the forms that where analyzed had very many questions, which could lead to exhaustion for those participating in studies. Some of the questions and the related response alternatives tended to be remarkably vague. For future research, I suggest that researchers reflects on the amount of questions that the forms contain, which response alternatives that are suitable to use and that researcher begin to develop new questionnaires with better questions. / Syftet med den här uppsatsen var att genomföra en analys för att kritiskt granska enkät- och frågeformulär som använts inom statsvetenskaplig forskning för att undersöka begreppen tillit, förtroende och misstro. Analysen hade tre utgångspunkter. Den första gick ut på att identifiera hur begreppen använts och operationaliserats i de granskade formulären. Den andra gick ut på att granska om det var möjligt att relatera formulärens frågor och påståenden till fem teoretiska antaganden baserade på förtroende och misstro. Den tredje gick ut på att granska formulären utifrån enkät- och frågekonstruktion. Analysen visade att de vetenskapliga instituten tenderade att använda likartade tillits- och förtroendefrågor. Några av de granskade formulären hade väldigt många frågor, vilket skulle kunna leda till uttröttningseffekter för de som deltar i institutens undersökningar. Ett ytterligare problem var att en del frågor och svarsalternativ var otydligt och vagt formulerade. För framtida forskning föreslår jag att forskarna som representerar de olika vetenskapliga instituten reflekterar över mängden frågor som formulären innehåller, vilka svarsalternativ som är lämpliga att använda samt att de på sikt börjar ta fram nya formulär med bättre frågor.

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Esta pesquisa visa fornecer uma explicação para o quadro de ampla desconfiança em partidos políticos no Brasil. Mobilizando modelos culturalistas e racionalistas para entender esse fenômeno, o trabalho se inicia com uma discussão teórica sobre o lugar da desconfiança numa democracia representativa, passando para o debate pormenorizado de como a literatura tentou tratar do objeto dessa dissertação, nacional e internacionalmente. Por sua vez, os capítulos empíricos, fundamentados sobre testes de qui-quadrado, análises de correspondência e regressões logísticas ordinais, revelam os efeitos assimétricos das principais variáveis elencadas pela literatura, em que seu efeito negativo sobre a desconfiança é maior do que seu efeito positivo sobre a confiança. Argumenta-se que o quadro ilustra a consolidação de uma cultura de desconfiança em partidos políticos no Brasil, com consequências e importância incertas atualmente para a compreensão da intrincada relação entre partidos políticos e sociedade civil. / This research aims to provide an explanation to the broad distrust in political parties in Brazil. Using culturalist and racionalist models to assess this phenomenon, this work starts with a theoretical discussion about the place that distrust has in a representative democracy, going through a detailed discussion on how the literature tried to study this dissertations object, nationally and internationally. The empirical chapters, grounded in chi-square tests, correspondence analysis, and ordinal logistic regressions, reveal asymmetric effects from the main variables brought out by the literature, where its negative effects on distrust are bigger than its positive effects on trust in political parties. It is argued that this scenario illustrates the consolidation of a culture of distrust in political parties in Brazil, with unknown consequences and importance for the comprehension of the intricate relation between political parties and civil society.