title: Trusting Facebook in Crisis Situations: The Role of General Use and General Trust Toward Facebook.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald , Greifswald, Germany .
authors.forename: Hermann
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Szymczak
authors.affiliation: Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald , Greifswald, Germany .
authors.forename: Pinar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kücükbalaban
authors.affiliation: Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald , Greifswald, Germany .
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lemanski
authors.affiliation: Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald , Greifswald, Germany .
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Knuth
authors.affiliation: Department Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald , Greifswald, Germany .
authors.forename: Silke
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schmidt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004630:Emergencies / Q000523:psychology*; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D061108:Social Media; D035502:Trust / Q000523:psychology*