Evaluating the Credibility of Online Information

Evaluating the Credibility of Online Information: A Test of Source and Advertising Influence

By Jennifer D. Greer

Brief Annotation:

The article explores how people view the credibility or trustworthiness of an organization’s Internet information by exploring source credibility and advertising credibility.

“Credibility, along with liking, quality, and representativeness, is one of four criteria that influence attitudes toward print and online news” (13, Sundar, 1999). Another aspect that helps influence a person’s opinion of credibility is their characteristics (i.e. age, income, race, education).

The advertising credibility examines people’s perceptions of whether an ad is viewed as favorable or negative. While thestatistics and sources seem sound, I do question whether the information would hold true today in the wake of the dot com bust, ponzi schemes, Enron’s collapse, and even the current political turmoil.

“Overall, the evaluation of the story credibility likely was more closely tied to the source cues rather than the advertising cues because participants paid so little attention to the ads” (24).

“Of all the demographic factors investigated, only self-estimate of Internet use and college major emerged as significant predictors of story credibility scores” (25). This quote is intriguing and deserves additional research.

· Do avid Internet uses still view online sources more favorably than light users or has it changed since the article was published?

· Is there any correlation between academic majors and their opinions toward a certain organization?

Research Questions:

RQ1: Are other individual characteristics (demographics, Internet use, motivations for going online)
predictive of participants’ assessment of story credibility?

RQ2: Does source credibility affect the way participants view the credibility of advertising on a site? Does
advertising credibility affect the way participants view the credibility of the Web site?

Method:

The research methodology used was an experimental design with 220 students. The female ratio of students was 69.5 percent, which I think is rather disproportionate to a well balanced, neutral study.

Conclusion:

The overall conclusion from this study indicated that people examine the source of the information to
determine the content’s credibility. While the article doesn’t distinguish what websites are viewed with a higher value, this area does appear worth exploring to find out what characteristics determine trust and more importantly, how to rebuild trust once its lost.