The issue of trust and modern information and communication technologies
In this article, the authors study the problem of balance of trust and mistrust associated with the turbulence of modern society, redundancy, and heterogeneity of information and communication flows creating a contradictory picture of the world. Social networks are considered as one of the basic modern information resources creating previously unavailable opportunities for communication, interaction, information sharing, and commonality construction. Social networks users broadcast the experience of constructing communications in real daily life in the Internet community forming circles of “friends”, building a chain of weak social ties; but the problem of trusting “friends” remains not solved in global space. A survey of users of social networks, conducted as part of this study, demonstrates conflicting findings. The opinions of “friends” does not always have an impact on the degree of trusting events, information, groups, likes, and dislikes to other users. Users often trust strangers and less familiar people. The social networks demonstrates the demand for uniting “brige-building” trust. However, the trust remains extremely narrow throughout, leading to fragmentation and alienation of individuals from each other in an attempt to find their safe niche. Distrust of narrow and wide radius leads to far-reaching consequences and greater uncertainty in society, not creating the preconditions for openness and the vision of the future.