Facebook and Information Trust

Abstract

This thesis explores Facebook as a social networking site and its uses as an information-seeking tool. This research was set out two explore two facets of information seeking when utilizing Facebook: why do people utilize Facebook as an information-seeking tool and what makes them trust the information that they have gathered through that tool. The main focus of this study is linked to aspects of information trustworthiness. This research uncovered that people utilize Facebook to gather either social information or miscellaneous information. Where the type of search influenced the usage of Facebook with five main categories: “monitoring” people, searching for social events or groups, searching for people with perceived similar previous experience and searching for specific pages. Trust was separated into two main parties, the system (i.e. Facebook itself) and the users. Trust with the system was low due to internal factors, such as privacy settings, and extraneous factors, such as Internet hackers. Trust in information between users was influenced by when the trust was established between the users, if trust was breached and whether the other user is known or unknown.