Components of Credibility of a Favorable News Source

Abstract

This department is devoted to shorter reports on research in the communications field. Readers are invited to submit summaries of investigative studies interesting for content, method or implications for further research.

Biased Press or Biased Public? Attitudes Toward Media Coverage of Social Groups

“…But diverse dimensions have emerged from factor analyses of the credibility concept (see, e.g., Markham 1968;Singletary 1976), and there does not appear to be a multidimensional stability underiying the concept. Credibility is not a trait that people ascribe consistently to a channel but, rather, a highly situational assessment (Berlo, Lemert, and Mertz 1969;Chaffee 1982).…”

Attributes of Identity Document Credibility: A Synthesis of Expert Knowledge

“…They found that highly experienced users may be overly skeptical and that inexperienced users tend to over-rely on suggestions from computers, as compared to a control condition with mimeographed lists of the same suggestions. This finding fits with an early belief among researchers that users are likely to be "in awe" of computers, viewing them as credible in a wide range of domains (Pancer, 1992), but later experiments show little evidence for this belief (Andrews and Gutkin, 1991;Waern and Ramberg, 1996 (Singletary, 1976) and (Vandenbergh, Soley, and Reid, 1981) asked participants in their studies to imagine a specific high-credibility source (in Singletary's case, a news person; in VandenBergh et al's, an advertiser) and to list as many terms as possible that, in the participant's view, gave credibility to that source. Other researchers either sampled the existing literature to create a list of candidate terms based upon their review or relied upon intuition.…”

The Impact of Communication Modality on Perceived Credibility of Panel Members

“…Facing this patchy universe, Metzger et al (2003) concluded ''Disagreements about the relative importance of the dimensions of source credibility led to the construction of various scales to measure this concept, each reflecting the priority of dimensions identified by particular researchers'' (p. 298). However, in a comprehensive review of the existing source credibility measures, we found-fully in line with Hovland and colleaguestrustworthiness (Bowers & Phillips, 1967;Lee, 1978;Markham, 1968;Mosier & Ahlgren, 1981;Ohanian, 1990;Salwen 1987;Singletary, 1976;Tuppen, 1974;VandenBergh, Soley, & Reid, 1981;White, 1990;Whitehead, 1968) and expertise (Lee, 1978;Markham, 1968;Newel & Goldsmith, 2001;Ohanian, 1990;Salwen, 1987;Simpson & Kahler, 1980;Tuppen, 1974) to form the central components of credibility.…”