The Effectiveness of Social Media in Customer Risk Awareness

Abstract

Social media has taken centre stage as one of the most widespread avenues for information transfer and is fundamentally altering client attitude towards risk. Social media platforms are different than previous communication venues, from the print and broadcast press to institutional alerts, in that they are fast, interactive, algorithmically sensitive to each user’s profile, and with a capacity for distributed production of messages. These characteristics represent unprecedented opportunities for organizations, regulators, and public agencies to communicate risk information that is timely and actionable. At the same time, however, they add layers of volatility and uncertainty that make it harder for customers to understand real risks  and allow misinformation, emotional hype, and unverified peer influence to warp that perception of risk. Given this context, the current study provides a comprehensive mixed-methods examination of how well social media increases customers’ awareness of risks in various contexts, including financial, public-health, and safety. The paper contends that effectiveness should be a multidimensional assessment-considering not just the increase in consumers' awareness of risk but also whether their awareness is accurate, translated into protective moves, and whether this communication setting attenuated distortion/exaggeration. Based on a 12-month content compendium and analyses of social media posts, a controlled experimental survey (N≈1200), and secondary enforcement actions and platform moderation policies, the study offers empirical evidence about what facilitates or hinders effective risk communication. The content analysis shows that official agencies generate very credible posts with a verifiable list of sources; however, these are dwarfed by the number of peer and influencer-owned pieces, which carry less authoritative footing and often feature sensational emotional framing. One fifth of the total sampled posts included deceptive markers illustrating the point that only in conjunction with network and social factors do contemporary platforms exhibit structural vulnerabilities.

The experimental results show that source credibility is the main driver of successful risk awareness; that posts by official regulators are trusted, believed to be true, and overall intend to take action more against securing protection than influencers or peer users. It also depends on how the message is framed. Emotional posts may heighten perceived gravity and urgency, but do not produce meaningful enhancement in accurate comprehension or responsible behavioral intentions unless supplemented by specific actionable instructions. Additionally, credibility is demonstrated to serve as a partial mediator of the relationship, explaining why official sources are more effective than influencer content in motivating protective behavior even when controlling for message content. The policy and moderation analysis extends the empirical findings by providing insight into regulatory actions in particular, financial areas that aimed at restraining deceptive promotions and low exposure to risky communication. The analysis does,  however, reveal substantial variation in the quality of enforcement across platforms and domains, so coordination efforts are still necessary. In the end, according to the study, social media is an effective yet imperfect means of raising customer risk awareness. As a tool to be used in good faith, by real voices with tight messaging and clear calls-to-action, AI can make it easier for consumers to protect themselves and mitigate risk. Alternatively, when free to be dominated by creative content, it can lead people to think and act in terms of better or worse ways of being; infected by more emotive or misleading data sets, it risks injecting error into our view of affairs, generating panic and bad judgment. This paper presents a robust methodological approach and, beyond that, provides policymakers, practitioners, and scholars with the critical evidence-based and actionable knowledge necessary to develop risk-communication strategies in digitally mediated contexts