DINS Faculty, Yu-Ru Lin, has been awarded a three-year grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop a "Network Theory of Distrust." The grant, for $749,476.00, will permit Dr. Lin to expand on her work on the roles and impact of biases in information ecosystems.
How do distrust and misinformation gain influence and affect society? There are inconsistencies between trust and influence, as evidenced by emerging opinion leaders who gain influence without fostering trust, despite the widespread belief that trust leads to increased trustworthiness and influence. The prevalence of misinformation and distrust has led to the rise of populism and the decline of democracy, implying that fostering distrust may be more effective than building trust. This project aims to develop a network theory to investigate how mistrust or distrust undermines trust and gains influence, as well as the relationship between individual choices and the collective diminishing of trust-influence. Through the development of a generative model, we capture and test trust-influence dynamics with both simulated and real-world datasets to offer a new theory and tools to predict group dynamics and conflicts in social networks.
Congratulations to Dr. Lin!