The Interrelation between Communities, Trust and Their Online Social Patterns

This paper describes an attempt to explore possible interrelations between today´s online communities, trust and their online social patterns. It reports on a study in progress to provide a deeper understanding of how and at what level such relations affect the development of learning social contexts, i.e contexts that represent individuals needs, group commitments, their responsibilities, goals and loyalties towards the need to progress, to bound and gain knowledge or become skilled. The paper starts by discussing this study´s rational, and proceeds on discussing alternative ways of depicting and understanding how our attitudes regarding online relationships can be related with trust. It terminates with a briefly presentation and discussion of the early results the ongoing work.