Heuristic Credibility Perceptions of Social Media Content: The Effect of Self-Confirmation and Social Endorsement

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: The Role of Personalization, Disclosure, and Identity in Information Processing

Abstract

Users of social network sites face the challenge to evaluate the credibility of various types of content in their news feeds. Given the cursory exposure, we assume that this process takes place in a heuristic mode. Therefore, we examined the effect of self-confirmation and social endorsement on credibility perceptions. In an online experiment (n=359) participants were exposed to two fictitious ‘fact postings’ that contained either information consistent with, neutral to, or inconsistent with their pre-existing attitudes towards genetically modified food and gender mainstreaming. Additionally, the user comments below the postings were either challenging or not challenging the content’s credibility. Results confirm that attitude consistency has a direct impact on perceived credibility and, hence, support the assumption of a self-confirmation heuristic. User comments, however, had no direct influence on the credibility evaluation, but a minor interaction effect with attitude consistency.

Authors

• Tilman Klawier, University of Erfurt

• Tabea Kremer, U of Erfurt

• Constanze Rossmann, U of Erfurt