Who trusts social media?

Highlights

• Extant literature on social media and trust is synthesized.

• Research on social media use and trust are presented, analyzed and discussed.

• Theoretical and practical implications are presented.

• Applied and future research suggestions for social media use and trust are offered.

Abstract

Trust is the foundation of all communication, yet a profound question in business today is how can we psychologically understand trust behaviors in our new digital landscape? Earlier studies in internet and human behavior have shown a significant connection between social media use and user personality (Hughes, Rowe, Batey, & Lee, 2012). Still, the connection between type of online user and their trust values is an under researched area. Today, millions of people globally read newsfeeds and information via their digital networks, but we do not know enough about human behavior related to which specific users of social media actually trust the news they read online. In this study we apply items from five different validated scales to measure trust to investigate to what degree a users' perception of trust varies depending on their gender, age, or amount of time spent using social media. Using a convenience population sample (n = 214) significant differences in levels of trusting behavior were found across gender, age, social media newsfeed preferences and extent of social media use. The findings suggest that women and younger users have the highest expectations for integrity, trusting others and expecting others to show empathy and goodwill. Implications of the results are discussed.

Introduction

Trust has throughout history been an integral part of our private and business lives, both on and offline. Trust philosophically binds us together with an intoxicating energy (Lingis, 2004). Indeed, learning to trust others and being trusted yourself is as important as breathing fresh air every day: all relationships depend upon trust. Nevertheless, the psychological perspectives of digital trust and trustworthy behavior on the internet is a recently new phenomenon within human behavior research. As the use of social media has grown exponentially during the course of the last decade, people can access news on social media sites from almost any computer or hand held device wherever they are in the world. In fact, they would find it hard to imagine a life without it as information about what is going on in the world is at one's fingertips. Instead of waiting to read the newspaper or watch the news on television in order to catch up on current events, people can get instant updates by simply going online and looking at web and social media sites. Nevertheless, since there are hundreds of thousands of social media sites featuring different viewpoints on a variety of subjects, it can be hard to distinguish what information is deemed the most accurate and most trustworthy, and what information is not. Indeed, only 20% of our respondents believe they can unquestionably trust the news that they read on social media. This suggests that understanding who trusts social media newsfeeds will be critical for not only media houses but also for businesses and politics.

We live in an age where distrust is rife, hence it is imperative that we gain a better insight into how trust evolves and is maintained in a digital world. Against this backdrop we need more empirical insights into users and site managers' expectations of future trustworthiness and dis-trustworthiness. More studies are needed since digital technological advancements are ever evolving and will have increasing impact on how we communicate in both society and business.

To fill a gap in the literature relative to perception of trust in the context of social media and news feeds, we conducted an exploratory study combining five different validated measures of Integrity (Mayer & Davis, 1999), Competence and Benevolence (McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002), Concern, and Identification (Shockley-Zalabak, Ellis, & Cesaria, 2000), to investigate whether gender, age, or the amount of time spent using social media effects one's perception of trust. Our second contribution at a conceptual level is the development and validation of this five factor trust measurement scale. Extrapolating from research on trust and social media offered in our literature review, this study explores the question: who trusts news on social media? We focus on the following problem statement in order to better understand human behavior and perceptions of online trust.

• RQ: Do social media users' perceptions of trust differ significantly with respect to their gender, age, social media usage and social media site preference for newsfeeds?