Citation

Szymczak H, Kücükbalaban P, Lemanski S, Knuth D, Schmidt S. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 2016; 19(1): 23-27.

Affiliation

Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald , Greifswald, Germany .

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/cyber.2015.0450

PMID

26779662

Abstract

An important concept that has been rather neglected in research on social media is the concept of trust. Although there is a considerable amount of research on online trust in general, little has been done in the area of social media. As a situation of risk is necessary for trust, the perceived trustworthiness of Facebook in crisis situations was examined in this study. A sample of 340 European Facebook users were questioned as part of a large European study about social media in the context of emergency situations. We found that participants' general trust toward Facebook as a medium predicted to a significant degree how much they would trust Facebook in a crisis situation. General use of Facebook and dispositional trust were also significantly associated with trust toward Facebook in a crisis situation.

Language: en