Twitter and Facebook posts about COVID-19 are less likely to spread misinformation compared to other health topics

The COVID-19 pandemic brought widespread attention to an “infodemic” of potential health misinformation. This claim has not been assessed based on evidence. We evaluated if health misinformation became more common during the pandemic. We gathered about 325 million posts sharing URLs from Twitter and Facebook during the beginning of the pandemic (March 8-May 1, 2020) compared to the same period in 2019. We relied on source credibility as an accepted proxy for misinformation across this database. Human annotators also coded a subsample of 3000 posts with URLs for misinformation. Posts about COVID-19 were 0.37 times as likely to link to “not credible” sources and 1.13 times more likely to link to “more credible” sources than prior to the pandemic. Posts linking to “not credible” sources were 3.67 times more likely to include misinformation compared to posts from “more credible” sources. Thus, during the earliest stages of the pandemic, when claims of an infodemic emerged, social media contained proportionally less misinformation than expected based on the prior year. Our results suggest that widespread health misinformation is not unique to COVID-19. Rather, it is a systemic feature of online health communication that can adversely impact public health behaviors and must therefore be addressed.

Beyond Influencer Credibility: The Power of Content and Parasocial Relationship on Processing Social Media Influencer Destination Marketing Campaigns

The power of social media influencers (SMIs) as effective endorsers for destinations and tourism products have been widely acknowledged. Despite being characterised as content generators by prior research, little has been done to examine how consumers perceive content produced by SMI, a key component of destination marketing campaigns. Moreover, parasocial relationship between SMI and the follower has been proven to enhance the persuasive impact of SMIs. Hence, this study aims to shed light on how consumers would assess the SMI and the content the SMI produced, as well as the effect of parasocial relationship on processing SMI destination marketing campaigns. Findings (N = 501) have highlighted that argument quality of SMI content has a stronger direct impact on campaign attitude, destination image and travel intention, as compared to source credibility. With the application of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as a framework, this study illuminates consumers’ interaction with the SMI destination marketing campaign and extends prior studies in understanding the importance of SMI content and parasocial relationship as a significant tool for future destination marketing.

Online Retail Store Community Engagement and Its Impact on Purchase Intentions in the Context of Online Reviews

Consumers want to engage with the retail store community in the shopping context. This study examines how consumers’ perceptions of source credibility and perceived usefulness of online reviews impact an intention to engage with the online retail store community and purchase intentions. The study also identifies differences when reviews are posted by customers versus store employees. Results show that the proposed relationships within the structural model are significant and reviews posted by store employees are seen as more credible, whereas reviews posted by other customers are perceived to be more useful. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Examining Online Health Community Users’ Information Adoption Intention

Due to the doubt on information credibility, users often hesitate to adopt the health information posted on online health communities (OHC). This may undermine the sustainable development of OHC. The purpose of this research is to identify the determinants of OHC users’ information adoption intention. The results indicated that both information factors and social interaction affect the adoption intention. Information factors include argument quality and source credibility, whereas social interaction includes perceived similarity and familiarity. The results imply that OHC need to ensure information quality and support users’ interaction in order to facilitate their information adoption.

The role of celebrity endorser toward brand attitude and purchase intention

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the source credibility of celebrity endorsers such as trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness) on brand attitudes and purchase intentions for endorsed brands. The type of sampling used is purposive sampling with a total of 300 respondents. The analytical method used is the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method using Smart PLS (Partial Least Square) software. This study finds that the trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness of a celebrity endorser have a positive and significant effect on brand attitude and purchase intention. This shows that the better the trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness of a celebrity endorser, the better the consumer's positive attitude towards the brand (brand credibility). Furthermore, the better the consumer's positive attitude towards the brand (brand credibility), the higher the purchase intention that arises from a consumer.

Source Credibility in Environmental Reporting of Two Different Media Landscapes

This research attempts to understand environmental communication taking place in countries with different political, socio-cultural contexts and organizational media levels. In this regard, the research's focuses on Pakistani and British print media systems, which have different organizational systems and contexts. Therefore, it is worth analyzing whether these organizational differences affect the way their news content in relation to the environment is being produced, with emphasis on the credibility of sources. A quantitative content analysis of two Pakistani and two British newspapers was conducted from the previous one decade through January 2007 to December 2016 by using a sample of 5315 environmental news stories published in four publications concerning from each country such as Dawn and Nation from Pakistan, whereas Telegraph and Guardian have chosen from the UK. The Significance of this quantitative study is based on the theoretical approach of agenda-setting and media source credibility. Assuredly, environmental reporting of Pakistani and British print media diverges in the context of source preferences in agenda-setting and media source credibility capacity. Subsequently, dominantly quoted news sources of environmental issues in Pakistani and British print media depict the environmental agenda of each country.

The fake news effect: what does it mean for consumer behavioral intentions towards brands?

Purpose This study aims to understand how fake news can cause an impact on consumer behavioral intentions in today’s era when fake news is prevalent and common. Brands have not only faced reputational losses but also got a dip in their share prices and sales, which affected their financial standing. Hence, it is significant for brands to understand the impact of fake news on behavioral intentions and to strategize to manage the impact. Design/methodology/approach This study uses several branding and marketing concepts such as brand experience, brand trust, brand credibility, consumer behavioral intentions along with variables suggested by Elaboration Likelihood Model and Heuristic Systematic Model such as personal relevance/involvement. For fake news, news truthfulness, news credibility and source credibility are used. Findings The results of this study shows that positive brand experience, brand trust, brand credibility help in creating positive behavioral intentions for brands. This study shows that brands focusing on providing positive brand experience have a stronger brand trust and credibility and are affected less by fake news than those brands which do not emphasize on these factors. Practical implications This paper can assist brand managers in understanding the impact fake news can have on behavioral intentions of consumers. The managers can strategize such that the fake news affects their brands the least. Originality/value The authors in this paper attempt to fill in the gap in literature, which is to study how the fake news impacts the brands considering the credibility, trust and experience they establish with their customers. The existing literature discusses the generation and dissemination of fake news on social media and its impact on political scenarios and personalities. Also, studies explain the impact of fake news on the financial position of brands, but marketing facets are not tested empirically.

The more, the better? Effects of transparency tools and moderators on the perceived credibility of news articles

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.

Exploring the Moderating Role of Readers’ Perspective in Evaluations of Online Consumer Reviews

Drawing upon the heuristic–systematic model (HSM) and considering the readers’ perspective, this study predicts that readers’ involvement and homophily between the reader and the review author (source) moderate the relationships between the credibility perception of online reviews and its antecedent factors. To test our hypotheses, we performed a user study on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The results show that reader’s involvement moderates source credibility, internal consistency, review objectivity, and review sidedness on review credibility. In addition, homophily between the reader and the source also moderates the relationship between review credibility and its source. Our study contributes to information processing literature, especially in the context of online reviews, and suggests a better classification of the attributes related to online reviews using the HSM. Besides, it helps e-commerce platforms to customize online reviews for each reader to satisfy their information need and help them to make a better purchasing decision.