Abstract:
Trust and authority are emerging as key elements of success on social media environment. In spite of
a burgeoning field of social media research, the topic on how institutions earn users’ trust and
establish their social media authority has received very little attention to date. This study describes
how academic librarians strategize in creating trust in social media contents and orient their actions
towards the goals of achieving social media authority as information experts. The study is guided by
the following research question: What are the trust-creating activities that academic librarians do on
library’s social media to establish social media authority? Data were collected through interviews
with 15 librarians from three Nigerian university libraries. Six themes on trust-creating
activities emerged from the findings. Three themes are related to trust-creating activities by
individual librarians: (a) post credible and useful social media contents; (b) provide relevant and
responsive feedback; and (c) have authorized identification or social media icons. Another two
themes are associated with trust-creating activities by librarians as a group: (a) collaborate in
assessing social contents; (b) be an authority in library and information services. One trust-creating
activity taken by the library management emerged i.e. involving the university authority for content.
The researchers offer suggestions for librarians to orient their actions towards the goals of achieving
social media authority and the distinctions are made in the trust- creating activities between
individual, group and organisation. This paper contributes to the under-researched field
investigating the actual implementation of social media authority in libraries. The study has shown
that social media authority is built on the platter of users’ trust. Based on this observation, we
believe that successful implementation of social media in the library is associated with not only how
proficient librarians are in social media use, but also how they build their social media contents
through trust-creating activities.
