Alyssa Appelman

Measuring Message Credibility: Construction and Validation of an Exclusive Scale

Despite calls to conceptualize credibility as three separate concepts—source credibility, message credibility, and media credibility—there exists no scale that exclusively measures message credibility. To address this gap, the current study constructs and validates a new scale. Results from a confirmatory factor analysis suggest that message credibility, specifically in the context of news, can be measured by asking participants to rate how well three adjectives describe content: accurate, authentic, and believable. Validity and reliability tests are reported, and contributions to credibility research are discussed.

Corrections of Newspaper Errors Have Little Impact

This content analysis of The New York Times corrections found that the majority were for errors in peoples names, titles, non-age numbers and dates. Most originated in the Features and Lifestyles and the National News sections and were assessed to have little impact on society.

A crisis by any other name? Examining the effects of journalistic “crisis labeling” on corporate perceptions:

In a between-subjects experiment (N = 88), participants who read about the “FreshVeg, Inc. tomato crisis” were more likely to say they lost confidence in the product than were participants who read about the “tomato crisis.” Interestingly, similar results were not seen regarding confidence in the company or other corporate perceptions. Overall, this study suggests limited effects of journalistic micro-frames during a public relations crisis. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Comparing and contrasting corrected errors at four newspapers

A content analysis of corrections (N = 507) from four influential newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times—shows that they correct errors similar to each other in terms of location, type, impact and objectivity. Results are interpreted through democratic theory and are used to suggest ways for copy editors to most effectively proofread and fact-check.

For the birds: Media sourcing, Twitter, and the minimal effect on audience perceptions

Twitter has emerged as a key news source, but questions remain about the ethics of relying on it as a source and the implications of such reliance for audience impressions. Two experiments test perceptions of news attributed to Twitter. Study 1 (N = 699) tests the effects of quoting from Twitter and showing actual tweets. The results suggest minimal influences on credibility or quality perceptions. Study 2 (N = 311) tests the equivalence of quotes attributed to various sources and investigates the effects of attributing the origin of a news story to Twitter. Results suggest that visual representations of tweets may have a negative effect, but otherwise perceptual effects remain minimal.

Mr. Mom in the News: The Relationship Between Stereotypes and Perceptions of Gendered News Stories

This study examined the relationship between women’s stereotypes and their perceptions of gendered news stories, specifically about stay-at-home parenthood. A between-subjects experiment with undergraduate women revealed that participants with stereotypes about women thought a news story about a stay-at-home mother was more typical than one about a stay-at-home father. Additionally, participants with stereotypes about women thought the news stories were low in realism, regardless of the story’s gendered content. Notably, participants who read the news story about a stay-at-home father found it more enjoyable than the story about a stay-at-home mother, regardless of their stereotypes.

Do News Corrections Affect Credibility? Not Necessarily

This study of types of corrections in newspapers finds that readers consider objective, high-impact corrections more important than errors that are objective and low-impact. The findings do not directly support previous research that suggested corrections help foster credibility.