WHICH SOURCE MATTERS FOR NEWS ON THE WEB? AN INVESTIGATION OF THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOURCE ATTRIBUTION AND THE PERCEPTION OF NEWS CREDIBILITY.
Student researchers:
Keunmin Bae,
Hyunjin Kang,
Bo-Youn Lee,
Shaoke Zhang (PhD Students)
This paper is based on a project from the "Psychological Aspects of Communication Technology" graduate course.
Faculty Supervisor:
Dr. S. Shyam Sundar
Introduction
A recent report by the Pew Research Center (2006) illustrated the importance
of the Internet as a news source. This report said that nearly one in
three Americans regularly get news from the Internet, a huge leap from
a decade ago when only one in fifty Americans acquired news online. Unlike
traditional or offline media, there are often multiple layers of sources
in the Internet, including the name of the portal site and that of the
news agency for a single online news story, or multiple news cues on a
single page, such as posted times and the number of viewers. Despite the
rising research interest in the Internet as news media, however, it has
not been thoroughly explored how multiple source layers such as names
of news agencies and portal sites appearing on the interface influence
readers’ perception of news. This study attempts to answer which
source layer people attribute news to in the environment of multiple source
layers and how the credibility of each source cue influences the credibility
of news story.
Research Questions
RQ: What is the relationship between the level of involvement, the credibility
of multi-layered source cues, and source attribution, AND news credibility?
Credibility is perceived as an attribute of the source, and readers’
response to the message is considered to be under influence of this attribution.
H1: The credibility of a news agency will be positively related to the
credibility of the news story.
H2: The credibility of a portal site will be positively related to the
credibility of the news story.
According to dual-process models, source credibility is considered heuristic
cues and can influence attitudes toward arguments by biasing thoughts,
even when people processed the message systematically. However, the models
also posit that central route vs. peripheral route (or systematic processing
vs. heuristic processing) activated in accordance with involvement.
H3: There will be an interaction between the level of involvement and
the level of news agency credibility for the credibility of news.
H4: There will be an interaction between the level of involvement and
the level of portal credibility for the credibility of news.
Previous literature found evidence for a cue-cumulation effect in the
Internet environment when source credibility is low.
H5: There will be an interaction between the level of news agency credibility
and the level of portal site credibility for the credibility of news.
Based on previous literature of credibility and dual-process models,
two hypotheses were formulated.
H6a: People with low involvement in the news will be more sensitive to
the credibility of a portal site when evaluating news credibility
H6b: People with high involvement in the news will be more sensitive to
the credibility of a news agency when evaluating news credibility.
Method
The hypotheses were explored via an online between-subjects experiment
that manipulated two levels of involvement in the news, two levels of
portal site cue credibility, and two levels of news agency cue credibility
for a 2 x 2 x 2 full-factorial design. All study participants (N = 218)
were randomly assigned to one of the eight stimuli conditions. Participants
were asked to read a piece of news on a simulated online news page and
then to answer both close-ended and open-ended questions about the perceived
credibility of the news and of its sources and of their involvement level.
Results
There was no significant main effect of the manipulated IVs on perceived
news credibility. However there were indirect effects of the manipulated
portal and news agency credibility on news credibility. Therefore, the
indirect effect of manipulated source credibility on news credibility
(i.e., manipulated source credibility ? perceived source credibility ?
perceived news credibility) was explored to test the hypotheses.
H1: Not supported. There was no significant main effect of perceived
source credibility on news credibility.
H2: Supported. The perceived portal credibility had main effects on the
perceived news credibility, F (1, 199) = 33.77, p < .001.
H3: Not supported. There was no interaction between the level of involvement
and the level of news agency credibility for the credibility of news.
H4: Not supported. There was no interaction between the level of involvement
and the level of portal credibility for the credibility of news.
H5: Supported. The interaction between portal credibility and news agency
credibility on news credibility was significant. F (1, 199) = 6.08, p
< .05; H5 was supported. In the low involvement condition, the perceived
portal credibility had main effects on the perceived news credibility
F (1, 95) = 18.78, p < .0001.
H6a: Partially supported. In the low involvement condition, the perceived
portal credibility had main effects on the perceived news credibility
F (1, 95) = 18.78, p < .0001. There were no main effects of perceived
news agency credibility and no interaction between perceived portal credibility
and news agency credibility.
H6b: Supported. In the high involvement condition, there was a significant
interaction between perceived portal credibility and perceived news agency
credibility on news credibility F (1, 104) = 15.28, p < .001.
Conclusions
The result indicated that when people are highly
involved in a news story, they care about the credibility of both proximal
and distal sources in evaluating news credibility. Therefore, for highly-involved
people, it was suggested that a source cue with low perceived credibility
in multiple layers of sources cues would negatively influence the perceived
news credibility, whereas low-involved people only care about the perceived
credibility of the most proximate source cue.
This study found evidence that the relative heuristic values of source
cues varied according to perceived psychological distances; if a source
cue of a news story appears psychologically proximate to readers, readers
tend to attribute the story to the source.
In addition, the current study supported HSM rather than ELM. The results
suggested that even people who have high involvement in the news were
influenced by source credibility which is commonly considered as heuristic
cue, when they evaluate a news story’s credibility.
The results suggested that portals of low or unknown credibility can gain
in credibility by publishing feeds from credible news agencies.
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