The trust strategy? An analysis of the relationship between social media strategies and trust

Since the rise of social networking sites (SNS) much research has been carried out regarding their effects on journalism (Gulyas, 2013; Hedman & Djerf-Pierre, 2013; Hermida, 2012; Newman, 2009; Arenberg & Lowrey, 2019; Lischka, 2018). At the same time, the public’s trust in news organizations has been shown to be quite low in many western countries, with only half or less of the population of said countries claiming to trust the news (Newman et al., 2017). However, no study has examined whether the SNS themselves play a part in forming the readers’ perception of trustworthiness. Because of this, this study investigated the following research question by focusing on a specific news organization: What role does the social media presence of De Groene Amsterdammer play in its subscribers’ perceptions of trustworthiness of the magazine itself? Considering that the majority of trust research has been carried out in quantitative manner, this study instead approached the problem from a qualitative method. Through the use of semi-structure interviews and a thematic analysis, the factors which drive the respondents’ perception of and trust in De Groene Amsterdammer were established. It was found that worries related to the commercialization of news subtract from the quality of and trust in the news. Moreover, a link between trust and perception was established. The specific characteristics of De Groene Amsterdammer as identified by the respondents were also shown to be part of the motivations for reading the magazine. The concept of trust was investigated in depth. The research first showed the applicability of Kohring and Matthes’s (2007) quantitative scale for measuring generalized trust also in a qualitative research about trust in a single news organization. Moreover, it showed that other aspects in addition to the dimension identified by Kohring and Matthes (2007) contribute to influencing trust: a positive evaluation of journalistic sources, the presentation of coverage confirmative of the respondents’ ideas, and the existence of a background of trust. The respondents’ perception of the Groene’s strategy was also detailed, including its limitations. While the magazine’s strategy was not found to have changed the respondents’ trust in the magazine, it did positively color the perception of the magazine of a few respondents, bringing in questions of the necessity of future studies on this subject.