TY - JOUR
T1 - Brokerbot: A Cryptocurrency Chatbot in the Social-technical Gap of Trust
AU - Lee, Minha
AU - Frank, Lily E.
AU - IJsselsteijn, Wijnand A.
PY - 2021/4/14
Y1 - 2021/4/14
N2 - Cryptocurrencies are proliferating as instantiations of blockchain, which is a transparent, distributed ledger technology for validating transactions. Blockchain is thus said to embed trust in its technical design. Yet, blockchain’s technical promise of trust is not fulfilled when applied to the cryptocurrency ecosystem due to many social challenges stakeholders experience. By investigating a cryptocurrency chatbot (Brokerbot) that distributed information on cryptocurrency news and investments, we explored social tensions of trust between stakeholders, namely the bot’s developers, users, and the bot itself. We found that trust in Brokerbot and in the cryptocurrency ecosystem are two conjoined, but separate challenges that users and developers approached in different ways. We discuss the challenging, dual-role of a Brokerbot as an object of trust as a chatbot while simultaneously being a mediator of trust in cryptocurrency, which exposes the social-technical gap of trust. Lastly, we elaborate on trust as a negotiated social process that people shape and are shaped by through emerging ecologies of interlinked technologies like blockchain and conversational interfaces.
AB - Cryptocurrencies are proliferating as instantiations of blockchain, which is a transparent, distributed ledger technology for validating transactions. Blockchain is thus said to embed trust in its technical design. Yet, blockchain’s technical promise of trust is not fulfilled when applied to the cryptocurrency ecosystem due to many social challenges stakeholders experience. By investigating a cryptocurrency chatbot (Brokerbot) that distributed information on cryptocurrency news and investments, we explored social tensions of trust between stakeholders, namely the bot’s developers, users, and the bot itself. We found that trust in Brokerbot and in the cryptocurrency ecosystem are two conjoined, but separate challenges that users and developers approached in different ways. We discuss the challenging, dual-role of a Brokerbot as an object of trust as a chatbot while simultaneously being a mediator of trust in cryptocurrency, which exposes the social-technical gap of trust. Lastly, we elaborate on trust as a negotiated social process that people shape and are shaped by through emerging ecologies of interlinked technologies like blockchain and conversational interfaces.
KW - Blockchain
KW - Chatbot
KW - Conversational agent
KW - Cryptocurrency
KW - Social-technical gap
KW - Trust
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104583272&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10606-021-09392-6
DO - 10.1007/s10606-021-09392-6
M3 - Article
VL - 30
SP - 79
EP - 117
JO - Computer Supported Cooperative Work
JF - Computer Supported Cooperative Work
SN - 0925-9724
IS - 1
M1 - 30
ER -