Trust Assessment Mechanisms in Social Networks

Trust is crucial not only for day to day interactions but also for sustaining memberships, bonds, ties and so on. In multi-agent systems(MAS), trust plays an important role in ensuring good interactions among agents. An agent may build ties with another agent influenced by degrees of competence and self-interest from past experiences. We have evaluated trust assessment mechanisms in MAS by focusing on aspects of trust formations from current state-of-the-art. A social network can be envisioned as an open and dynamic MAS. Due to the nature of social networks, its structural patterns changes overtime. Social network theory can be used to understand this phenomenon. Techniques required to perform this analysis are documented in this report. However, trust aspects of social networks have yet to be modelled for social networks. This is mainly due to the difficulty in implementing socio-technical systems that captures the rich cognitive perspectives of humans. In this report, we are highlighting three issues that should be addressed in order to perform trust assessments in social networks.