The economy of trust: communication technologies and social bonding process

Abstract

The objective of this work is to present the economy of trust as a social bonding process, which would characterize, in the perspective adopted in this study, a communication process. The practices that individualizes the so-called economy of trust remember the customary exchanges and borrows between neighbors, family members and acquaintances that start to happen among strangers and requiring trust in someone completely unknown, constituting, in that way, experiences of exchange of goods and services starting from unusual relations. This study uses bibliographical review and the results of a research carried out over four years by the author of this article, whose methodology used for data collection mainly participant observation and in-depth interviews. The text begins by analyzing the economy of trust as a communicational phenomenon. It then approaches the context in which the phenomenon exists to finally present the proposal of the economy of trust, which according to the results obtained in the research concerns a particular process of social bonding that presupposes three characteristics: the peer-to-peer dynamics, driven by digital technologies of communication; the construction of trust between strangers and the perception that there is an abundance of resources and not scarcity.