Analysis of news credibility in the digital press. Source types have a limited effect, while age, gender, and education are differential factors

Martí-Danés, Aleix; Besalú Casademont, Reinald, 1983-; Pont Sorribes, Carles; Gómez-Puertas, Lorena

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14648849231215190

Analysis of news credibility in the digital press. Source types have a limited effect, while age, gender, and education are differential factors

Citation

Marti-Danes A, Besalu R, Pont-Sorribes C, Gomez-Puertas L. Analysis of news credibility in the digital press: source types have a limited effect, while age, gender, and education are differential factors. Journalism. 2023 Dec 4;25(12):2582–603. DOI: 10.1177/14648849231215190

Abstract

Studies of the credibility of sources is a key research focus in the communication field, especially in journalism. Given the increase in misinformation as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, source credibility is crucial for people to contrast news stories in an infodemic context. Our research, based on a demographic study (N = 2007) carried out in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic, used a multifactor news credibility indicator to explore how different types of sources affected the perceived credibility of a fake news item on COVID-19 in the written digital press format. We also performed a cluster analysis to determine the subgroups profiled according to key sociodemographic variables (age, gender, and education). Our results indicate that expert and political sources had a null effect on news credibility, while citizen and celebrity sources had a clear negative effect. Furthermore, our fake news story that did not cite sources was awarded a positive level of credibility. We also found that age, gender, and education level were statistically significant in their association with news credibility.