This study examines how repetitive news publishing on the Internet has changed evaluations of the credibility of the press and news aggregators. The temporal and spatial characteristics of the Internet have facilitated repetitive publishing of almost identical news content by the same news companies. The mechanism of repetitive news is based on the interplay between journalistic and algorithmic curations, which coexist on news aggregation sites. Based on a nationwide survey in South Korea, we found that the repetitive-news block was the strongest (and negative) predictor of the credibility of both the press and news aggregators. The more frequently people are exposed to repetitive news and the more they perceive it as being problematic, the less likely they are to regard the press and news aggregators as credible. These results have implications for online news flow and credibility research.
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