Wag the Blog: How Reliance on Traditional Media and the Internet Influence Credibility Perceptions of Weblogs Among Blog Users

TLDR

The study surveyed weblog users online to examine how they perceive blogs’ credibility relative to traditional media and other online sources, and how reliance on these sources predicts blog credibility while controlling for demographics and politics. The authors conducted an online survey of weblog users to assess their credibility perceptions and source reliance. Weblog users rated blogs as highly credible—more so than traditional sources—and judged blogs to provide deeper information than fairness, while traditional sources were rated as moderately credible.

Abstract

This study surveyed Weblog users online to investigate how credible they view blogs as compared to traditional media as well as other online sources. This study also explores the degree to which reliance on Weblogs as well as traditional and online media sources predicts credibility of Weblogs after controlling for demographic and political factors. Weblog users judged blogs as highly credible—more credible than traditional sources. They did, however, rate traditional sources as moderately credible. Weblog users rated blogs higher on depth of information than they did on fairness.