Exploring Trust in the Age of Social Media: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach - Research Proposal

Introduction

I am working on the topic of: "Understanding Trust Between Social Media Users". The study of this topic requires the application of more than one disciplines for a proper understanding of the topic. The topic requires the intervention of both psychological and sociological theories for a proper study of the topic. The topic is very relevant due to the increased number of sites for social networking (Koranteng et al., 2020). The increased number of cites means there is increased knowledge sharing on the same sites. Varied forms of information are shared on the sites, including info about the economy and even academic information (Koranteng et al., 2020).

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Some academic institutions have decided to snatch the opportunity of using social media to in improving the learning experience of learners through increased peer interaction and academic engagements especially for college students (Koranteng et al., 2020). Increased interaction on social media platforms have led to decreased face to face interactions of students and hence decreasing trust among students and other social media users. Trust is the confidence that an individual will not be intentionally harmed by his or her peers. Lack of trust has always proven to be the primary barrier in communication among social media users and hence making it hard for effective learning to take place on the social media platform (Verma et al., 2019). Trust, therefore, also encompasses one's confidence in the capabilities, reliability and honesty of the people they interact with (Verma et al., 2019). The level of trust one has to the person he/she is interacting with determines the behaviour of the person during the interaction (Cheng et al., 2017). Such characters as being open and chatty are expressed when there is a strong trust between people while suspicion and disinterest is a result of lack of trust (Cheng et al., 2017). It is, therefore essential to study some of the factors that will help in developing and even increasing trust among social media users.

Research Questions

While conducting the research, the primary objective is to identify the factors that affect trust between social media users. Since this research will impress the multidisciplinary model, it will also be necessary to answer the following epistemological and methodological questions effectively:

• What aspects would help the study attain the best results?
• How to make it multi-confessional and appealing to humanity as a whole?
• What is the breakthrough in the project that will make organizations help in funding the project or benefit from it to make an economic idea, composing, and practice more certified and useful to all humankind?
• The primary research question to be answered by the research, on the other hand, is:
• What are the factors that affect the formation of trust among social media users?
• How do the identified factors affect trust formation in social media users?
• How can one manipulate the identified conditions in enhancing trust among social media users to increase trust for an effective interaction?

Significance of the Study

This study will be very beneficial to both the learning institutions advertisement firms (Lou & Yuan, 2019). This is because the mentioned firms have started to rely on social media in the attainment of their objectives. For advertising firms, trust is critical since customers must be confident that the information given by the advertising firm is incredibly accurate before buying the product (Lou & Yuan, 2019). For learning institutions, learners need to trust one another for them to interact effectively. It is only through effective interaction that students can effectually learn. In addition to the two institutions, the study will also inform other studies in the field since little is documented on how to increase trust among social media users since it is an emerging topic.

References

Cheng, X., Fu, S., & de Vreede, G. J. (2017). Understanding trust influencing factors in social media communication: A qualitative study. International Journal of Information Management, 37(2), 25-35.

Koranteng, F. N., Wiafe, I., Katsriku, F. A., & Apau, R. (2020). Understanding trust on social networking sites among tertiary students: An empirical study in Ghana. Applied Computing and Informatics.

Lou, C., & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer marketing: how message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 19(1), 58-73.

Verma, N., Fleischmann, K. R., & Koltai, K. S. (2019, March). Understanding online trust and information behavior using demographics and human values. In International Conference on Information (pp. 654-665). Springer, Cham.