Trust the Doctor, Distrust the Medicine: Competing Forms of Trust and Economic Relations on Social Media

• In Event: Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 12. Health & Covid-19

Abstract

How do doctors build trust? Public trust in medicine and individual physicians is critical for public health. Extant research suggests that trust in medicine and physicians as individuals are mutually reinforcing: if the public trusts the medical field, then they are more likely to trust the recommendations of their individual physician. Instead, through an interview study with 78 physicians from diverse backgrounds on social media, we find that trust in medicine and trust in individual doctors are often divided and sometimes at odds with one another. Physicians who were on social media primarily to attract new clients were interested in creating personal trust with individual potential patients who might then select them over their competitors. In contrast, physicians who were on social media not to attract clients but instead to educate or entertain the public were not focused on establishing personal trust with potential patients but general trust in the profession as a whole. From these findings, we argue for importing the idea in the sociology literature on trust of general trust as distinct from personal trust in medicine and expertise more broadly, and build on this theory to reconceptualize the relationships between these two forms of trust. This theory helps elucidate how physicians seem to build trust in surprisingly incongruous ways and illuminates the paradox of why people who do not trust medical expertise overall might trust their doctor.

Authors

• Eliza Brown, University of California, Berkeley

• Farnam Mohebi, University of California, Berkeley

• colby fortin, University of California Berkeley