Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Is Social Media A Threat Or Can It Be A Trusted Agent?, William Ward, Katherine Cole-Miller, Ann Fruhling, Kathryn M. Cooper

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

There is a prevailing belief within the United States Department of Defense (DOD) that social media is a threat to national security, leading to restrictions in workplace use of social-media applications. However, instead of dismissing social media as a threat, leaders should be asking whether or not the information received via social media can be trusted, thus leveraging the information-sharing capabilities of social media. This article presents a theoretical case for quantifying social media trustworthiness by exploring the factors that influence trust in social media and proposing a trust framework to be used to quantify trustworthiness.