Study Of Mass Media Credibility Indicators

This dissertation is an empirical research on measuring the construct of Chinese media credibility. On the whole, it focuses on the following two problems: one is to explore Chinese media credibility index, the other is to analyze the antecedents of the index. The latter is in order to examine the validity of the media credibility index. Six leading research questions are included in this paper:RQ1: What are the credibility index of Chinese media organizations and practitioners? How about the weighting of each indicator?RQ2: What are the index of Chinese news credibility? How about the weighting of each indicator?RQ3: What are the reasons that Chinese audience distrust media organizations, media practitioners and news coverage?RQ4: What would be the antecedents of Chinese media organization/practitioner credibility index?RQ5: What would be the antecedents of Chinese news credibility index?RQ6: What would be the factors that affect Chinese audience's judgment about their distrust on media and news coverage?The whole dissertation can be divided into five parts as follows:Chapter 1 expounds the research goals, research backgrounds and research questions of this dissertation, and defines the objectives and concept measurements.Chapter 2 conducts the literature review of media credibility research in Western countries. In this part, the author revealed the historical development of media credibility research, and discussed the study on the index, as well as the antecedents of media credibility. On the basis of literature review, and taking Chinese social and media context into account, the author proposed the theoretical hypotheses of this dissertation.In chapter 3, the author demonstrated the measures and process of the study, including the pilot study, focus groups discussion (Q-methodology) face-to-face interview in Shanghai city, etc.Chapter 4 reveals the index construct of Chinese media credibility by analyzing the survey data and examining the validity of the index.Chapter 5 summarizes the whole conclusions, including illuminating the creative idea...