Exploring the Effects of Source Credibility and Others' Comments on Online News Evaluation

The present study examined the roles of source credibility and others' comments in audiences' evaluations of online news by experimentally manipulating source of news stories and others' comments on them. The results show that neither source credibility nor others' comments on online news produced significant effects on participants' news evaluations directly. However, the results reveal that the slant of comments significantly affected participants' perception of news acceptance among public audiences, and such perceived public audiences' news acceptance in turn had significant effects on participants' own news evaluations, indicating that others' comments had an indirect effect on audiences' evaluations of online news through perception of public audiences' news acceptance. These results suggest that people tend to use others' comments on online news messages as a representative cue for their estimation of the general public's news acceptance, which affect their own evaluations of the messages.