Transparency is often discussed as a way to increase the public’s perception of journalism. While its adoption by newsrooms is relatively well studied, only a few studies have investigated its effects on news users’ credibility judgments. We build on research about transparency effects and report the results of two online experiments (total N = 2262), one with a local and one with a national newspaper frame. Our results suggest that transparency does not affect the perceived message and source credibility newspaper articles and that moderating factors such as cognitive involvement and media skepticism are more important predictors of credibility assessments.
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