Research Reports
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September 2023 | The Search For Credibility view entire report as PDFAlthough greater transparency from news organizations regarding their journalistic standards and reporting practices has been suggested as a means of addressing a perceived decline in news credibility, recent studies have shown that the mere presence of journalistic transparency elements often does not improve news readers’ perceptions of the site. The present study seeks to add clarity to the processes by which users form credibility assessments of news websites by integrating eye-tracking and video logging of adult news consumers’ (N=74) behavior across six live news websites with their responses to scale and open-ended questions after browsing. The findings suggest that viewing and browsing information related to journalistic best practices predicted higher assessments of article credibility and perceptions of the news organization’s value to its audience. The findings also showed that users’ age, gender, and procedural news knowledge influence their browsing behavior. Implications for the design of journalistic transparency elements are discussed. |
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April 2021 | Missing the Mark view entire report as PDFIn order to help guide future studies into optimizing the positioning and display of the Trust Project's Trust Mark logo, and to gauge the impact of noticing the label on participants’ perception of credibility, an online experiment was conducted using a regional metro daily website (n=843). Each study participant read one of four different news articles containing the Trust Mark logo in a label, and were asked to read the article as they would if they had found it on their own. After reading the article, participants answered a series of questions about their perceptions of the article and the publishing news site, and then some questions asking about their recall and perceptions of the label itself. Results showed that both positioning and design treatment of the Trust Mark logo affected participants’ recall of seeing it. Participants who noticed the Trust Mark logo had higher perceptions of the credibility of the article and greater news engagement intentions regarding the article. Analyses showed this effect was mainly driven by an increase in site credibility perceptions among those participants who had low levels of general trust in news. |
