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Towards a New Trust Model for Health Social Networks

Authors:
Sojendra Pradhan
Valerie Gay

Keywords: Online health information; social networking sites; health social networks; trust model

Abstract:
More specific purpose driven social networking sites have emerged since social networking sites have gained popularity by bringing people with shared interests together to interact. In health care, they are referred as Health Social Networks (HSNs). Given the sensitive nature of health information, trust is fundamental for them. The emergence of pervasive and ubiquitous computing environment and overwhelming information available online is helping the health social networking sites gain popularity at a fast pace. Health social networkers are willing to create, share or retrieve trustworthy health or lifestyle related information. Therefore, it is essential that trust is stipulated and scrutinised to understand how the users perceive healthcare, how they decide to interact with HSNs. This paper analyses external factors such as perceived information quality, perceived system quality, perceived reputation and perceived trust signs which impact the trust model for HSNs. In particular, ‘perceived reputation’ based on the factor ‘who has recommended the site’ is given an emphasis on this paper. It highlights that popularity of social networking sites is changing the way trust models have been defined in the past. This is because social relationships created via social networking sites are also impacting on choosing the HSNs and how users are sharing health information on these platforms.

Pages: 52 to 57

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013

Publication date: June 23, 2013

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3972

ISBN: 978-1-61208-280-6

Location: Rome, Italy

Dates: from June 23, 2013 to June 28, 2013