Measuring personal and academic differences in students’ perceived social media credibility

Purpose Social media is a popular source for information sharing in the contemporary world. Social media allow individuals to create, publish and diffuse contents directly. This openness has increased the risk of running into misinformation and raised questions about credibility of information shared. This study aims to examine the credibility of social media through the perceptions of university students. It also intends to see the difference in opinions based on their gender, academic disciplines and programs of study. Design/methodology/approach The study was based on a cross-sectional survey; a structured questionnaire was developed by consulting the relevant literature. Students were selected on convenient basis from all the programs of four universities of Faisalabad, Pakistan. Four hundred students were selected randomly from each university. Findings The findings indicated that students considered social media partially credible. Currency, community wellness, understandability and completeness of information were the highly rated facets, while factual and unbiased information was the low rated aspects. The perceived credibility of social media among the university students was the same across genders, programs of study and academic disciplines. Research limitations/implications The study may be helpful for social media service providers to address the concerns that students had in their perception regarding its credibility. Originality/value This study may likely benefit faculty members, researchers, librarians/information professionals and digital libraries to understand the students’ concerns about social media credibility from a developing country’s perspective. Such understanding will enable them to better address, educate and train university students at how to evaluate the quality of information on social media by offering information literacy programs. It is direly needed that university libraries should train the students to be proficient in assessing the quality of information by offering information or digital literacy programs. Moreover, the study may be helpful for social media service providers to address the concerns that students had in their perception regarding its credibility.

“Ignorance is strength”

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Danish textual news satire constructs its social critique of the many Facebook users whose comments during COVID-19 imitate expert statements in disregard of authoritative health science statements. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, UNESCO has proclaimed a disinfodemic of emotive narrative constructs and pseudo-science on the internet and especially in social media. As with the ruling Party’s paradoxical slogan “ignorance is strength” in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, we sense a similar trend of the public disinfodemic, but studies of this paradox in satirical publications are scarce. Thus, the goal here is to scrutinize this enigma exemplified in an article in the Danish spoof news online media of RokokoPosten in which such experts are parodied in a kind of “doublethink” style which begs critical reflection on social media credibility. Hence, such textual news satire may potentially provide a vaccine against post-truth delusions of health science as it provides immunity against the disinfodemic by its own causative agents.

Look Who’s Writing: How Gender Affects News Credibility and Perceptions of News Relevance

Women reporters are underrepresented in newsrooms and assigned to gender-stereotypic roles, but to what effect? To better understand the role of gender in news making, this article utilizes three survey experiments to investigate the effects of journalists’ gender on reader perceptions toward reporter credibility, outlet credibility, and the relevance of news to them. We find little evidence that readers doubt the credibility of a reporter or a news outlet based on the gender of a reporter, the gender of the source, or the gendered nature of the issue. Our findings have implications for media credibility and newsroom diversity.

Poisoning the information well?

This study examines the impact of fake news discourse on perceptions of news media credibility. If participants are told they have been exposed to fake news, does this lead them to trust information institutions less, including the news media? Study 1 (n = 188) found that news media credibility decreased when participants were told they saw fake news, while news credibility did not change when participants were told they saw real news. Study 2 (n = 400) found that those who saw fake news – and were told they saw a fake news post – decreased their trust in the news media while those who saw fake news and were not debriefed did not change their perceptions of the news media. This shows that the social impact of fake news is not limited to its direct consequences of misinforming individuals, but also includes the potentially adverse effects of discussing fake news.

It doesn’t matter what you watch, but how much you watch: social attitudes, media objectivity, and frequency of informing as predictors of conspiracy beliefs

In this study, we hypothesized that traditionalist social attitudes (conservatism, religiousness, and authoritarianism) significantly predict COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, as well as conspiracy mentality in general. We also hypothesized that these relationships are mediated by the objectivity of the media individuals inform themselves from, and the frequency of informing. The sample consisted of 341 participants from Serbia (mean age 33.51 years), 40.5% women. We measured authoritarianism, social conservatism, religiousness, conspiracy mentality, media objectivity, frequency of informing, and two sets of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs: Harmless virus and Hiding information. The results revealed that conservatism predicts all three outcome variables, authoritarianism only COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and religiousness only beliefs that the virus is harmless. Media objectivity does not mediate these relationships. Frequency of informing is a significant mediator only in a relationship between authoritarianism and all outcome variables, indicating that the role of seeking more information is in the function of reducing threat perceived by more authoritarian individuals. Additionally, the study reveals that media objectivity may not be important for reducing conspiracy beliefs, but rather media credibility. These potential explanations should be further explored.

Mistake or Manipulation? Conceptualizing Perceived Mis- and Disinformation among News Consumers in 10 European Countries

In the midst of heated debates surrounding the veracity and honesty of communication, scholarly attention has turned to the conceptualization of mis- and disinformation on the supply-side of (political) communication. Yet, we lack systematic research on the conceptualization of perceived mis- and disinformation on the demand-side. Original survey data collected in ten European countries ( N = 6,643) shows that news consumers distinguish general misinformation from disinformation. Yet, the high correlation between the two dimensions indicates that disinformation perceptions may be regarded as a sub-type of misinformation perceptions in which intentional deception is a core element. This paper aims to make a contribution to the misinformation and media credibility literature by proposing a first conceptualization of perceived untruthfulness corresponding to increasing levels of cynicism and skepticism toward the factual status and honesty of information.