Digital Mistrust: Ethnographic Encounters with Computational Forms

James Maguire, Kristoffer Albris

Research output: Journal Article or Conference Article in JournalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

This special issue is driven by a curiosity about the role of computational forms – practices, logics, technologies, and infrastructures – in social life and how they mediate issues of trust and mistrust: designated (mis)trust. Through a series of ethnographic encounters, its contributors describe how (mis)trust is rendered as an issue of concern by various actors as it is problematized, conceptualized, narrated, and designed for. In doing so, the papers analyse the work (mis)trust does in these settings, with a focus on the role of computational thinking within public discourses on democratic elections, the use of computational technologies in establishing bureaucratic order, the computational practices at play in the production of coding subjectivities, and the computational artefacts that assure data circulations within digital infrastructures. This introduction argues for a more expansive understanding of the relation between trust and mistrust in the digital age, countering the oftentimes default rendering of these concepts as antonymic. Instead, it argues that they live in a mutable relation. Despite prevailing technosolutionist approaches to (mis)trust, it cannot, we suggest, be solved for, resolved, or even eviscerated. Whatever actors (engineers, programmers, professionals etc) do in their efforts to ‘fix’ mistrust, it continues to mutate as a social form.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Cultural Economy
Volume17
Issue number6
Pages (from-to) 725–736
Number of pages11
ISSN1753-0350
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Nov 2024

Keywords

  • Trust
  • mistrust
  • computation
  • digital
  • machinic
  • mutations

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