Exploring the Effects of Source Credibility and Others’ Comments on Online News Evaluation

Abstract

The present study examined the roles of source credibility and others’ comments in audiences’ evaluations of online news by experimentally manipulating the source of online news stories and others’ comments on them. The results show that source credibility did not produce significant effects on participants’ online news evaluations directly. However, the slant of comments significantly affected participants’ perception of news acceptance among public audiences, and such perceived public audiences’ news acceptance in turn had significant effects on participants’ own news evaluations, indicating that others’ comments had an indirect effect on audiences’ evaluations of online news through perception of public audiences’ news acceptance. These results suggest that people tend to use others’ comments on online news messages as a representative cue for their estimation of the general public’s news acceptance, which affects their own evaluations of the messages.

Keywords

online news source credibility commentaries news acceptance news evaluation

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