A Survey of Trust in Social Networks

Web-based social networks have become popular as a medium for disseminating information and connecting like-minded people. The public accessibility of such networks with the ability to share opinions, thoughts, information, and experience offers great promise to enterprises and governments. In addition to individuals using such networks to connect to their friends and families, governments and enterprises have started exploiting these platforms for delivering their services to citizens and customers. However, the success of such attempts relies on the level of trust that members have with each other as well as with the service provider. Therefore, trust becomes an essential and important element of a successful social network. In this article, we present the first comprehensive review of social and computer science literature on trust in social networks. We first review the existing definitions of trust and define social trust in the context of social networks. We then discuss recent works addressing three aspects of social trust: trust information collection, trust evaluation, and trust dissemination. Finally, we compare and contrast the literature and identify areas for further research in social trust.