WHAT MAKES AN ANONYMOUS CONFESSION POST TRUSTWORTHY? AN EVALUATION OF PERCEIVED TRUSTWORTHINESS AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS

Abstract

Over the last decade, internet users have been switching from conventional social networking services to anonymous social networking platforms, motivated by privacy concerns and a desire to withhold their actual identities. Anonymity serves as a double-edged sword, granting privacy and protection to users while making it more challenging to verify source credibility and assess the trustworthiness of online content. This study examines college students’ evaluations of anonymous confession posts published on NUSWhispers, the largest college related Facebook confession page in Singapore. While severely under-studied in credibility research, confession pages are extremely valuable in reflecting social concerns and interests, while offering alternative spaces to discuss controversial topics. Often, these topics are high in anonymity sensitivity, meaning that users prefer to discuss them anonymously as opposed to revealing their identities. Guided by an adapted framework of perceived trustworthiness, this study seeks to understand how college students evaluate anonymous confession posts, and the influence of their assessments on engagement intentions on Facebook. To answer these two research questions, focus groups were conducted with 32 college students from across six institutions in Singapore. Due to limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, these focus groups were conducted via video-conferencing platform Zoom. Findings from the focus group discussions cemented the importance of source characteristics, message content, writing style, social endorsement, reader involvement and experience on participants’ evaluations. Among these factors, message content was identified as the most salient indicator of trustworthiness, with participants evaluating confessional content for consistency, scenario plausibility and confessors’ persuasive intents. The discussions also revealed an additional factor of platform reputation, which was found to negatively influence perceptions of trustworthiness in the case of NUSWhispers. Participants were generally unwilling to publicly engage with confession posts due to the fear of public judgement and a desire avoid association with confession posts. Instead, participants preferred to share and discuss confessions privately with their friends. Among those who considered commenting on confession posts, participants were only willing to share advice related to academic concerns, and steered clear of controversial topics such as sexual behaviours. Interestingly, a few participants were willing to leave mocking comments when they identified the confessions as trolls or fake posts. Insights from this study may be applied to other anonymous platforms such as product review or advice forums. Additionally, findings may guide the design of digital information literacy programmes for college students, or even younger populations who are increasingly exposed to anonymous digital content.