The Study on the Optimism and the Amount of Trust in Social Media Content and the Level of their Ethical Health among the Students of Sirjan University of Technology

Abstract

As trust in the physical space is an interactive element, the interaction in the internet as a space parallel to physical space, requires a level of trust especially the interpersonal trust. Perhaps we can argue that trust in the internet is more important, due to the acceptance of higher risk in the interaction with anonymous individuals. The effective mechanisms are applied in the internet financial transactions including trust in the trade marks, trust in the reputation of company or institution name/title, and trust in the secure technology used; however, in non-commercial interactions, the trust still has much higher risk. It originates from the need to interact with those whose identity is unknown to us. Thus, in this research we examine the amount of trust in the content of these social networks. This is a survey study and the research population consists of 200 students of Sirjan University of Technology that is randomly chosen. According to the statistical results obtained, there is no significant relationship between the time spent on virtual social networks and their daily use with trust in the social networks. However, there is a consistent significant relationship between the type of membership in virtual social networks and students’ trust in them.