On social media, the intensity of a user’s preoccupation with a social networking site like Facebook is strongly correlated with trust in the social platform, according to North Carolina State University.
The study appeared in Online Information Review.
“This study focused on the impact of misinformation on social networking sites,” the co-authors wrote in their findings.
“Through theorizing and integrating literature from interdisciplinary fields such as information behavior, communication and relationship management, this study explored how misinformation on Facebook influences users’ trust, distrust and intensity of Facebook use,” they also stated.
To examine the association between trust and social media use, a survey was administered to 661 American users on Facebook.
The results of their questionnaire led to the conclusion that the level of trust in information stumbled upon in the platform along with one’s ability to weed out misinformation, contributed on a significant scale to the attitudes of users toward Facebook.
In essence, those key factors help shape the trust or distrust a user exhibits while on the platform.
“This study contributes to the growing body of literature on information and relationship management and digital communication from several important aspects,” the co-authors explained in their journal article.
“This study advanced the relationship management literature and demonstrated that a trustful attitude exerted a stronger influence on the intensity of Facebook use than distrust did.”
