Civility and Trust in Social Media

Angelo Antoci, Laura Bonelli (laura.bonelli@istc.cnr.it), Fabio Paglieri (fabio.paglieri@istc.cnr.it), Tommaso Reggiani (reggianit@cardiff.ac.uk) and Fabio Sabatini
Additional contact information
Laura Bonelli: Sapienza University of Rome
Fabio Paglieri: Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology

No 11290, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Social media have been credited with the potential of reinvigorating trust by offering new opportunities for social and political participation. This view has been recently challenged by the rising phenomenon of online incivility, which has made the environment of social networking sites hostile to many users. We conduct a novel experiment in a Facebook setting to study how the effect of social media on trust varies depending on the civility or incivility of online interaction. We find that participants exposed to civil Facebook interaction are significantly more trusting. In contrast, when the use of Facebook is accompanied by the experience of online incivility, no significant changes occur in users' behavior. These results are robust to alternative configurations of the treatments.

Keywords: trust; social media; Facebook; online incivility; social networks; cooperation; trust game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D9 D91 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ict and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - revised version published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2019, 160, 83-99

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Related works:
Journal Article: Civility and trust in social media (2019)
Working Paper: Civility and Trust in Social Media (2018)
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