Authority and trust in information

As information science becomes better grounded in late-modernity's notions of pluralism and interpretative facts, many of the services and systems that information science have traditionally been associated with are being challenged to justify themselves as cognitive authorities. Further, designers and developers are being challenged to consider how information sources, systems, and services are trusted by users, what constitute authority and how that it is expressed, and how credibility plays out in a world of infinite choice and opinions. While relevance was once a central challenge in information science, authority and trust are quickly becoming the defining aspects of systems, services and sources. This panel will explore the notions of authority and trust from multiple perspectives and offer insights from across the broad spectrum of information science, incl. specific technologies, epistemologies, media, traditions, etc.