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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.
Szymczak et al. (Fri,) studied this question.