SMI and Follower Relationship: Trust, Acceptance and Advice

Joy Stevens, Ryan Sparacino,  Linda Weber

Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, Utica, NY, USA

The purpose of study was finding out the relationship between trust and the bond between the social media influencer and the follower. The two questions presented in this research are as follows: 1) what is the relationship between social media influencer’s acceptance of the follower for who they are and the trust the follower has in this influencer, and 2) what is the relationship between the trust the follower has in the influencer and how likely the follower is to take this influencer’s advice outside of their area of expertise. These are significant because social media is growing dramatically and relationships are forming online. Thus, in order to study these relationships for the future- we must be able to research how these relationships are formed and grow into accepting trusting relationships. The researchers created a survey and advertised it online via social media (a post and a video). This advertising led to 128 responses to use for the data in this research. The survey questions were all regarding the relationship formation between a follower and a social media influencer along with background questions about the respondents. The first analysis compared two question responses: the social media influencer’s acceptance of the follower for who they are (independent variable) and the trust the follower has in this influencer (dependent variable). The second analysis compared two question responses: the trust the follower has in the influencer (independent variable) and how likely the follower is to take this influencer’s advice outside of their area of expertise (dependent variable). The analyses for test one of the first research questions in this study showed that the relationship between the independent and dependent variables were found to be significant meaning the social media influencer’s acceptance of the follower has an effect on the follower’s trust in that influencer. The implementation of a control variable found the same results. The results for the second analysis found the relationship between the independent and dependent variable was significant meaning the trust the follower has in the influencer has an effect on whether or not the follower takes advice given by the influencer outside of their area of expertise. The implementation of a control variable found the same results.