Interacting Is Believing

Abstract

This study examined the effect of social cues and interactivity in social media on journalists' credibility based on literature of journalists' credibility, social information processing theory (SIPT), and social presence theory. Results from a mixed-design experiment showed participants rated highly interactive journalists to be more credible than those who are less interactive in social media. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical implications for journalists' credibility in social media and practical applications for journalists seeking to utilize social media to engage with their audiences.

Exploring the Influence of Social Media Information on Interpersonal Trust in New Virtual Work Partners

“…Social media platforms can be conceptualized as an IS artefact consisting of three components: the technological, supporting social interactions; the informational, consisting of user generated digital content; and the social, involving communication and collaboration among people [22,23]. Popular examples of social media technologies are Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter [8,23,24].…”

“…Social media platforms provide individuals with the possibility to exchange information in various forms, comprising not only the user-generated digital content [22,25] but also the perception of social interaction [23,24] which can potentially influence interpersonal trust in real-life relationships [4]. This is justified by the informational cues provided by social media platforms that can be interpreted as signals, as described by the signaling theory from informational economics studies [17].…”

“…A high degree of social presence is important for the development of trust because the trustor's perception of human interactions with the trustee is a precondition for trust [30], especially its affective dimension [11,19,20]. Despite the limited presence of actual human contact in virtual workplace environments, research has suggested that signals of social presence can be embedded in technology artefacts, such as websites, as well as via images and biographical information that convey sense of personal and sensitive human contact [11,20,24,30]. This is in agreement with the informational component of social media technologies, the focus of which is on user-created content, such as personal profiles, text, photographs, and video streams [22,23].…”

“…Second, social information processing theory (SIPT) [18,31] proposes that, when communicating solely via ICT tools in which nonverbal cues are not available, individuals adapt and use available information to form impressions and evaluate others. Therefore, SIPT suggests that, in virtual environments, people tend to rely on peripheral social information, such as language, written attitude, and self-disclosure to form impressions about others [24,25,31]. In this sense, social media technologies provide its users with generous identity signals to disclose information about other individuals [22,23].…”

“…How these signals affect different dimensions of interpersonal trust depends on whether they make salient aspects of personal identity or social identity [32]. For instance, with regard to personal identity, research has suggested that personal identity signals, such as the availability of an individual's work history information on a social media profile, can function as a set of cues that allow others to better evaluate this individual's professional credentials [24,25], which, in turn, can help to foster a cognition-based component of trust towards him/her [10,11,19].…”