Incivility, Source and Credibility: An Experimental Test of News Story Processing in the Digital Age

Wu, Y; Thorson, E.

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%T Incivility, Source and Credibility: An Experimental Test of News Story Processing in the Digital Age
%A Wu, Y
%A Thorson, E.
%J Media Watch
%N 3
%P 126-142
%V 8
%D 2017
%K Incivility; source; credibility; digital journalism
%@ 0976-0911
%X The “civility crisis” has been a big concern in the U.S. and abroad at least since the 1990s. Evidence suggested that uncivil attacks in political discourse have a negative impact on political trust. Administering an online survey with an experiment embedded in it, the study seeks to find out whether source and uncivil commentary in a news story have an effect on the level of credibility of a news story. A 3 (Source: newspaper, blog, student’s class writing) x 2 (Incivility: civil and uncivil) mixed subjects design online survey was administered via Qualtrics on a sample of students (N = 438) in a large Midwestern State University. The data suggested incivility was a significant predictor of news credibility, including message credibility and news organization credibility. A negative association was found between perceived incivility and news credibility.
%C MISC
%G en
%9 Zeitschriftenartikel
%W GESIS - http://www.gesis.org
%~ SSOAR - http://www.ssoar.info