(Mount Saint Vincent University, 2019-06) Adedeji, Adefolake T.
This study examines the impact of 2018 Facebook privacy breach crisis on users of Facebook and how it affected their trust in this organization. Situational crisis communication theory and social mediated crisis communication theory were used as theoretical frameworks. Quantitative research design was adopted, and a structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Participants of this study were 312 students, alumni and faculty members from a Canadian university. They were mostly between the ages of 19-25 (52.88%) and majority were student (92.95%). The findings of the study revealed that the participants perceived the breach of data to be an important crisis. As a result of this crisis, they did not trust Facebook and its leadership. However, they did not deem it a big enough reason to quit using social media. This research calls for the education on data privacy breaches so that people will know its implications if not taken seriously.