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ENHANCING PERCEIVED CREDIBILITYOF CITIZEN JouRNAEiSM WEB SITES

By Kirsten A. Johnson and Susan Wiedenbeck

Backgroundand RelatedWork

J&MC QuarterlyVol. 86, No. 2Summer 2009332-3482009 AEJMC

This Study examined whether information about a writer and hyper-links on a citizen journalism Web site affected the perceived credibility ofstories. Participants read stories from a popular citizen journalism Website and rated the stories in terms of perceived credibility. Results showthat hyperlinks and information about the writer do enhance perceivedstory credibility. Credibility is enhanced most greatly luhen both hyper-link and writer iirformation are included and, to a lesser extent, whenjust hyperlink or writer information is present.

This study examines "markers" that can increase perceived credi-bility of stories on cifizen journalism Web sites. Specifically this studylooks at stories posted online via the citizen journalism Web siteOhmyNews.com, and two markers of credibility information aboutthe writer and hyperlinks included in the story.

A previous study investigating elements that help and hurt theperceived credibility of Web sites indicated that including markers ofexpertise can help boost perceived credibility.' In particular, that studyfound that Web sites can convey expertise through listing informationabout the author, as well as citations of, and references to, the author'swork.

Building upon this study's additional exploration of such factors,perhaps citizen journalism sites can improve perceived credibility byproviding information about those who write on the sites, as well as byallowing visitors to their sites to verify information easily through theuse of hyperlinks embedded in the story.

Many studies have explored credibility perceptions of traditionalmedia. However, the credibility of citizen journalism is a relativelynew area. This study seeks to add to the body of literature on citizenjournalism, as well as to expand on previous research in the areas ofWeb credibility and trust.

Antecedents to Citizen Journalism. The idea of allowing ordinarycitizens to have a voice in news coverage is not new. The civic, or pub-lic journalism movement, allows the concerns of citizens to help shapethe news agenda.^ The presidential election in 1988 is often cited as

Kirsten A. Johnson is an assistant professor in the Department of Communications atElizabethtown College, and Susan Wiedenbeck is a professor in the College oftnformation Scienee and Technology at Drexel University.

332 JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNIGATION QUARTERLY

when civic journalism emerged. Journalists and others raised concernsthat the election news being covered was not news of interest to citizens,and that journalists had not considered the public in their coverage.^

Citizen journalism is an exemplar of Web 2.0 applications that typ-ically include collaboration among users, information sharing, and cre-ativity via the Web. Gill argued that the idea of news as "conversation"has helped give rise to citizen journalism Web sites, because citizen jour-nalism expands two-way communication between readers and media.'*

Citizen Journalism. Citizen journalism, also referred to as "grass-roots journalism" and "participatory journalism," is news content pro-duced by ordinary citizens with no formal journalism training.^ In theirpaper titled "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future ofNews and Information," Bowman and Willis define citizen journalism ascitizens participating in the news process from the collecting of informa-tion through the dissemination of that information.'^

Arguably the most well-known and popular citizen journalismWeb site in the world is OhmyNews.com, founded in February 2000.OhmyNews.com has an international English-language site, as well as aKorean site. Citizen journalists have flocked to these sites; the Koreansite alone has more than 42,000 registered citizen journalists and ninety-five full-time staff.'' Editors review and post hundreds of articles a daywritten by citizen journalists who contribute content. From February2005 through July 2005 OhmyNews.com had anywhere from about 3million to 18 million page views per day.*

According to Outing, there are many different models of citizenjournalism.' These models include readers commenting on already pub-lished articles, as can be found on the Northwest Voice and The BakersfieldCalifornian sites. Another model has a professional journalist posting asmall story and then allowing citizens to post their experiences that per-tain to the story. A news organization may also consider a stand-alonecitizen journalism site made up of contributions from citizens that is edit-ed and is separate from the core news brand. Examples of these types ofsites are mymissourian, Westportnow, and ibrattleboro.com. A newsorganization may also choose to create a stand-alone citizen journalismsite where stories are not edited before they are posted on the site, forexample getlocalnews.com and Dailyheights.com. The work of citizenjournalists can also be combined with the work of professionals.OhmyNews.com is an example of this approach. Citizen reportersaccount for about 70% of the site's content, but professional reporters cre-ate the rest. Not everything submitted by citizens is accepted for publi-cation.

Media Credibililty. Trust in mainstream media is eroding. A sur-vey by the Pew Research Center For the People and the Press shows cred-ibility in all major news media has fallen in recent years." Media credi-bility soared following President Nixon's resignation in 1974; publicopinion polls showed 68% of people had trust and confidence in thenews media." However, following this time of soaring public confidence,trust in the media fell and continues to fall. Also according to the Pewsurvey, among the major networks, 24% of people find NBC News to be

ENHANCINC PERCEIVED CREDIBILITY OF CITIZEN OURNALISM WEB SITES

highly credible, down from a high of 30% in 1998; 24% find ABGnews highly credible, down from 31% in 1996; and 24% of people findGBS News highly credible, down from 32% in 1996.'=^ The same down-ward trend can be seen with newspapers, although the decline is not asdramatic. The percentage of people who say they can believe most ofwhat they read in their daily newspaper has dropped from 84% in 1985to 54% in 2004." A similar pattern holds true for local and network tele-vision news. During the same period, TV news believability has fallenfrom 85% to 62%, and network TV believability has fallen from 87% to64%.

Simultaneously, news on the Web has developed and expanded.Large numbers of people have turned to online news. In 2007, 37% ofthose surveyed reported that they had gone online for news, up from30% two years earlier." A growing proportion of that online news is gen-erated by citizen journalists. In 2007 the number of citizen journalismWeb sites approached 1,500, and professional journalists are turningmore often to citizens to help in reporting news.'' However, lacking theinstitutional credibility of long-established, professional media organi-zations, citizen journalism must find new ways to project credibility toreaders, who may be skeptical of news content provided by everydaycitizens.'*"

Defining Credibility in the News Media. In the 1950s the RoperGenter for Public Opinion Research began measuring media credibilityin its polls, sparking debate in the media community about the defini-tion of credibility. Some of the earliest work in this area defined thecredibility of a news story as being synonymous with the believabilityof the story.'' This definition is still widely used today in mediaresearch.'" Some researchers make a distinction between receiver andsource credibility. Newhagen and Nass offer the following definition ofmass media credibility defined from a receiver-oriented perspective:"The degree to which an individual judges his or her perceptions to bea valid reflection of reality."" But they point out that measuring mediacredibility is complicated by the fact that another dimension is added tothe mix when technology, in the form of a television monitor or printingpress, is used in the transmission of the message. They go on to say thatbecause of this, mass media credibility is really "...the perception ofnews messages as a plausible reflection of the events they depict."^"

In terms of the source, there is usually not a clear distinction madein many studies.^' A person, an Organization, or even the channel beingused to transmit the message can be considered the source. A distinctioncan also be made between an "internal" and "external" source, wherethe "internal" source is the person who originated the message, and the"external" source is the mass medium used to transmit the signal.When source credibility was taken into account, Newhagen and Nassfound people judge television according to the on-air people presentingthe news (individuals), whereas newspapers are judged more as organ-izations (institution).^^ Hovland and Weiss found that when a statementis made by someone perceived as a "high prestige" source there is ahigher level of agreement with the statement."

334 JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY

Credibility of citizen journalists may be called into questionbecause they are not part of the traditional media. One of the ways tradi-tional media try to lend a measure of credibility to their information is byadhering to a filter-then-publish model. This means that the informationthat comes into a newsroom is edited prior to being released to a massaudience. Conversely, citizen journalism Web sites tend to operate undera publish-then-filter model, where information is released to the massaudience and then it is edited,^ "* In some cases people with journalismexperience are employed as editors, whereas in other cases, visitors to thesite can act as editors. The missing layer of editorial oversight may causecredibility problems,^'

Web Credibility. Including "markers" of expertise on a Web sitecan improve the site's credibility, Fogg et al, used the following items asmarkers of expertise for informational Web sites:

Site is by a news organization that is well respectedoutside of the Internet,

Site lists authors' credentials for each article, Site has articles that list citations and references, Site has few news stories, but gives detailed informa-

tion for each, Site says it is the official site for a specific topic, Site has ratings or reviews of its content, The site displays an award it has

A study of the credibility of political messages presented on theInternet found that those who use the Internet heavily tend to rate onlineinformation as credible,^' The study also showed that when participantswere presented with three sources of political information (one that wasan expert, one that was trustworthy, and one that was a celebrity), partic-ipants found the celebrity to be the most credible.

The lack of research on markers that lead to higher levels of per- Hypothesesceived credibility of stories on citizen journalism Web sites has led to thisstudy's three main hypotheses,

HI: Providing information about a writer's back-ground and providing a picture of the writer on a citizenjournalism site will increase the perceived credibility of thestory.

Previous studies show that providing information about the authorof online information as well as a picture may enhance the credibility ofthe site,^ " We believe that this finding can be extended to individual sto-ries on a citizen journalism Web site. We hypothesize that providing bothinformation about the writer's background and providing a picture ofthe writer will enhance the credibility of stories found on the citizen jour-nalism site. In this study, "information about a writer's background" is

ENHANGING PERGEIVED CREDIBILITY OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM WEB SITES 335

defined as information about the life and previous activities of theauthor of a news article on the Web site. "Citizen journalism" is definedas news content produced by ordinary citizens with no formal journal-ism training.^' "Perceived credibility" in this study will be assessed, as ithas been in a number of previous studies, by measuring believability,accuracy, trustworthiness, bias, and completeness.^"

H2: Hyperlinks that allow users to verify informationcontained in a story on a citizen journalism site will increasethe perceived credibility of the story.

Hyperlinks can be important in helping users form judgmentsabout online credibility.^' We hypothesize that stories on the citizen jour-nalism Web site that contain hyperlinks will be rated by participants asmore credible than stories that do not contain hyperlinks. In this study"hyperlinks" are defined as the blue underlined words in the text of thestories presented to the participants via a computer connected to theInternet. When clicked, they allow participants to go to differentInternet pages.

H3: Providing information about a writer's back-ground, a picture of the writer, and hyperlinks that allowusers to verify information contained in a story on a citizenjournalism site will affect the perceived credibility of thestory.

As stated above, previous research indicates that providing infor-mation about the writer's background, a picture of the writer, andhyperlinks that allow users to verify information enhance the credibili-ty of Web sites. Providing all of this information to a user may furtherenhance the credibility of not only the site, but also of the story on thesite. H3 seeks to examine the combination of all the factors. We hypoth-esize that the stories on the citizen journalism site containing all of thesepieces of information (writer information, a picture, and hyperlinks) willbe rated by participants as more credible than stories that do not containall of the above inf^ormation.

Overview. This study was conducted using an experimentalmethod in a computer laboratory setting. Participants were assigned tofour groups: a control group that read just the story, a group that readthe story and saw information about the writer, a group that saw hyper-links in the story, and a group that saw both writer information andhyperlinks. Participants read three stories written by citizen journalistsand rated the perceived credibility of each story.

Participants. One hundred and twenty undergraduate studentsenrolled in a small college in the Eastern United States participated inthe study. The students were 18 to 23 years old, with a mean age of 20.Eighty-two were females (68%) and 38 were males (32%). In this col-


TABLE 1Questionnaires Used, Constructs in the Questionnaires, Cronbach's Alpha(a) Reliability

Statistic, and Use of the Questionnaires in Other StudiesQuestionnaire Constructs Same Criteria Used inPerceived Credibility

Issue Salience

Site Credibility

Sponsor Credibility

Internet Experience

Propensity to Trust

Believability, Accuracy, .81Trustworthiness, Bias,Completeness

Relevance, Interest, .85Enjoyment, ImportanceTrustworthiness, .86Believability, Reliability,Authoritativeness,Honesty, Bias of the WebSite

Credibility, Integrity, .87Reputation,Successfulness,Trustworthiness

Web Use, Expertise, .79Experience

Usually Trust People, .87Give People Benefitof the Doubt,Trust New Acquaintances

Abdulla et al., 2005; Buey, 2003;Planagin & Metzger, 2000; Flanagin &Metzger, 2003; Gaziano & McGrath,1986; Johnson & Kaye, 1998; Johnson& Kaye, 2004; Meyer, 1988; Newhagen& Nass, 1989

Flanagin & Metzger, 2003

McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar,2002; McKnight, Kacmar, &Choudhury, 2004

lege, there are more females (1,295) than males (696), and this rafio ofmales to females refiects that distribution. Mann-Whitney U testsshowed no significant gender difference on credibility or story engage-ment. Also, there were no significant differences between the responsesof males and females on questions about the writer's picture, writer'sbackground informafion, and number of links clicked. Twenty-three ofthe parficipants were communicafions majors, and the other 97 parfici-pants were from a variety of majors ranging from hard sciences tohumanities.

The parficipants reported being highly experienced in using theWeb (M = 18.21, sd = 1.85, out of a possible 21 points). Prior to this sfijdy,28% of participants reported having heard about citizen journalism. Interms of use, 73% of parficipants reported never having visited a citizenjournalism site, and 96% reported never having contributed content to acifizen journalism site.

Questionnaires. All parficipants answered quesfions about the per-ceived credibility of the stories they read. Six scales were used in thestudy: perceived credibility, issue salience (how engaged the reader was

ENHANCING PERGEIVED CREDIBILTTY OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM WEB SITES 337

FIGURE 1Example of Writer Information and Photo from the Web Site OhMyNews.com International

OmM KtMnhoiTIs a fieabnce wtmnuaan vho enjo^ taveling and uncoveringnugpm of rapjfo along Bie way. tn ttia worts of ths Rustan poetviadlmir MayaKovsKy,Wth me /anaomy has gone mad /nothing bul heart/roaring everywhere."He has rallied a bcmk on teafilng In Japan and has had work appear In a varte^ ofnewsppers and mapaSnes. Curmnfiy ba^d In Hong Kong, Oavid grew up In and aroundVancouver, Canada. His Web site is www l^ldaybils3.com.

in the story), site credibility, sponsor credibility, Internet experience, andpropensity to trust (a person's trusting nature in general). All responseswere measured using a 7-point scale. The scale ranged from StronglyAgree to Strongly Disagree. Because it is a 7-point scale there is a neu-tral point. Reliability of the scales was measured with Cronbach's alpha(see Table 1).

Procedures. The participants were divided into four groups of 30participants each. Each group read the same three stories (one hardnews story, one feature story, and one sports story) from theOhmyNews.com International Web site. After reading each story partic-ipants filled out the Perceived Credibility and Issue Salience scales. Inthe groups that saw the writer information and picture, participantsresponded to three specific questions about how the writer informationand picture affected credibility. The writer information in the study con-sisted of a few short paragraphs about each writer, taken with permis-sion from the OhmyNews.com Web site, as well as the photo of eachwriter (see Figure 1). The stories were presented in a different order toeach group.

In the groups that saw the hyperlinks, participants responded tothree questions about how hyperlinks affected credibility. At the end ofthe study, all participants completed demographic questions and threescales: Site Credibility, Sponsor Credibility, and Propensity to Trust.

Non-parametric statistics, including the Mann-Whitney U test andthe Spearman rank correlation, were used to analyze the data. Thesetests were chosen because the data were ordered, i.e., for each question,participants chose responses on a 7-point scale in order from most pos-itive to most negative. Also, a histogram showed that the data were notnormally distributed, which also pointed to the use of non-parametricstatistics. Comparisons of groups using the Mann-Whitney U were pair-wise, with each group compared to the control group. Interactions werenot analyzed because the Mann-Whitney U test does not support inter-action analyses.

For clarity, certain group designations will be used to distinguishthe groups from one another. The group that saw only the story (thecontrol group) will be referred to as the "Story Only" group. The groupthat saw the story and the writer information (including the writer'sphoto) is the "Story+Writer" group. The group that saw the story andthe hyperlinks is the "Story+Hyperlinks" group. The group that saw


Group

TABLE 2Perceived Story Credibility Means, Standard Deviations, and Results

ofthe Mann-Whitney U Test for Each GroupM sd U

Story Only (Control)

Story+Writer Info

Story+Hyperlinks

Story+Both

*p < .05

71.33

78.37

76.90

79.80

13.02

11.02

9.18

10.96

302.50

320.00

254.50

.029*

.054

.004*

Note: The table shows the results of pair-wise comparisons between the group that saw the storyonly and each of the other groups listed in the table. An asterisk indicates a significant differenceat the .05 level.

the Story, plus both the writer information and the hyperlinks, is the"Story+Both" group.

The questionnaires in the study were analyzed to determinewhether providing additional information in the form of hyperlinksand/or information about the writer impacts perceived story credibil-ity. Results show that including this information does indeed increasethe perceived credibility of the stories, in particular for hard news sto-ries. Study results also point to the importance of the picture of thewriter. The more positively participants rated the picture of the writer,the more credible they rated the story.

Propensity to Trust. As has been found in previous studies, dis-position to trust plays a role in whether someone judges a Web site tobe credible.^ ^ The more trusting a person is, the higher he or she tendsto rate sites in terms of perceived credibility.^ -' Because individuals' dis-position to trust is a factor in the formation of credibility judgments,this was measured in the study. No significant differences were foundbetween the groups in propensity to trust. This means that the differ-ences measured between groups, in terms of their perceived credibili-ty, were not due simply to the fact that one group had more trustingpeople in it than another.

Not surprisingly, and as has been found in the studies mentionedearlier, this study did support the finding that those who have a high-er propensity to trust also rate items higher in perceived credibility. Inthis study those who had a higher propensity to trust rated the stories,the site, and the people who created the site as significantly more cred-ible than those with a lower propensity to trust.

Perceived Story Credibility. Perceived story credibility washighest for the group that saw the story plus the writer informationand hyperlinks (see Table 2). The Mann-Whitney U test showed there

FindingsandDiscussion

ENHANCING PERCEIVED CREDIBILITY OF CITIZEN OURNALISM WEB SITES 339

Group

TABLE 3Perceived Story Credibility Means, Standard Deviations,and Mann-Whitney U Test for Each Group by Story Type

M sd U

Story Only (Control)Hard NewsSportsFeature

Story+Writer InfoHard NewsSportsFeature

Story+HyperlinksHard NewsSportsFeature

Story+BothHard NewsSportsFeature

*p

large; therefore, this is a medium correlation.^'' There were also positivesignificant relationships between how credible participants rated thewriter's picture and how engaged they reported being in the story, r, =.33, p < .009, as well as how credible they felt the people who created theWeb site were r^ = .26, p < .042. The latter result is interesting in that theparticipants did not have access to the sponsor information on the Website, yet still showed a significant correlation.

The Importance of the Written Information about the Writer: Whenexamining whether the written information about the writer's back-ground was helpful, a significant positive relationship was foundbetween perceived credibility of the stories and engagement in the sto-ries. Participants were asked to rate the statement "The information onthe writer's background was helpful in determining whether or not thestory was credible." The correlation of writer's information and per-ceived credibility of the story was r, = .28, p < .030. Getting to know thewriter of the story through the background information boosted storycredibility scores. Perhaps participants were able to ascribe more trust tothe stories because, after reading the writer information, they now felt thewriter was qualified to write about the subject matter, based on the back-ground information presented, which raised the participants' credibilityperceptions. However, as discussed below, a hierarchical regression didnot find a strong effect of the writer's background information when allthe factors (writer's picture, writer's information, links clicked) wereincluded.

Results also showed that information about the writer's back-ground correlated to the story engagement scores, r, = .31, p < .018. Itappears that learning more about the person who wrote the article helpedparticipants become more engaged when reading the stories. It could bethat learning that the writer had written about a particular subject before,or has an interest in the subject he is writing about, helped to spark inter-est in the participants.

Hyperlinks Clicked: Surprisingly few participants chose to click onhyperlinks in the stories. The average number of hyperlinks clicked was0.93 out of 17 total hyperlinks participants had the opportunity to click.Also, just 31% of participants chose to click on hyperlinks. In the instruc-tions at the beginning of the study, participants were not told whetherthey should click on the hyperlinks, in order to capture natural onlinebehavior.

The Importance of the Presence of Hyperlinks: Participants who sawstories with hyperlinks were asked several questions about the hyper-links in the stories. Only the first statement was rated by all participants:"Just the fact that the story contained hyperlinks (even if you didn't clickon them) made the story seem credible." A correlation of this questionwith participants' perceived credibility scores showed a significant result,r,= .34, p < .009. Similarly, correlation showed that the presence of hyper-links is related to engagement scores, r^ = .38, p < .003.

Finally, a hierarchical regression was used to assess the additiveeffect of four factors, propensity to trust, writer's picture, writer's back-ground information, and number of links clicked, on the dependent vari-

ENHANCING PERCEIVED CREDIBILTTY OF CTTIZEN JOURNALISM WEB SITES 341

ropensityto Trust

-.02

1.00

Writer'sPicture

.49**

.15

1.00

Writer'sInformation

.06

.23

.44*

1.00

LinksClicked

.44*

.26

.40*

.49**

1.00

TABLE 4Spearman Rank Correlations of the Variables in the Regression

Correlation MatrixCredibility

Credibility 1.00

Propensity to Trust

Writer's Picture

Writer's Information

Links Clicked

*p < .05; **p < .01

able, credibility. The correlafions of the variables are presented in Table4. Table 5 presents the standardized regression coefficients i), the stan-dard error of the coefficient (SE), the R^ in each block, and the R^ changefrom one block to the next. The standardized regression coefficient tellsthe number of standard deviations that the dependent variable willchange as a result of one standard deviation change in the predictor.The R^ tells how much of the variance in the dependent variable, credi-bility, is explained by the predictor variable(s) contributing to it.

In the first block propensity to trust was not significant. In thesecond block the addition of the writer's picture was significant (F[2, 28]= 3.23, p < .05) and accounted for 20% of the variance in credibility. Inthe third block, contrary to our expectation, the addition of the wri-ter's background information was not significant, contributing only anadditional 3% beyond the writer's picture. Finally, the result of thefourth block, with all four variables included, was significant (F[4, 28] =4.23, p < .01), and accounted for 41% of the variance in credibility.Notably, the number of links clicked contributed 19% to the variance incredibility.

In sum, the propensity to trust and the writer's background infor-mation had minor influences on the model. It appears that the image ofthe writer and the hyperlinks are the key predictors in the credibilitydecision.

Overall Story Engagement. Story engagement, measured by theIssue Salience scale, was significantly higher for the Story+Hyperlinksgroup and the Story+Both group, when compared to the Story Onlygroup (see Table 6). Providing the additional information in the form ofhyperlinks and writer information serves to engage the reader in thestory. This does not come as a surprise, since hyperlinks allow partici-pants to more fully engage in what they are reading by finding out addi-tional information. As suggested above, although relatively few partici-pants reported clicking on hyperlinks in the study, perhaps it is just the

3 4 2 JOURNALISM b MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY

TABLE 5Hierarchical Regression of Credibility on Predictors

Regression ModelBlock 1 Block 2 Block 3

SE . SE SEBlock 4

SE

Propensity to Trust

Writer's Picture

Writer's Information

Links Clicked

R^ valuesR^ change values

*p < .05; *> < .01

.19 .58

.04

.10 .55

.41 .57

.20

.16*

.15

.48

-.19

.23

.03

.58

.62

.57

.01

.52

-.49

.57

.41

.19**

.54-

.55

.59

.54

fact that the participants had the option of clicking on the hyperlinks thatcaused them to become engaged.

A surprising result was that there was no significant difference instory engagement between the Story Only group and the Story+Writerinformation group. Hyperlinks are most influential in increasing storyengagement, as opposed to writer information. In the Story+Both group,story engagement is significant and this may be mainly the influence ofhyperlinks as opposed to the writer information. Whether they areclicked on or not, hyperlinks are a cue to the user that additional infor-mation is available, and that the writer of the article cared enough aboutwhat he or she was writing to include a link to additional information.

The more participants reported being engaged in the stories, thehigher they rated those stories in terms of perceived credibility. A signif-icant positive relationship was found between how credible participantsin all groups found the story to be and how engaged they reported beingin the story, r, = .29, p < .001. This finding is consistent with previousstudies that show the level of engagement does, in fact, impact perceivedcredibility.'^

The presence of writer information and hyperlinks increased theperceived credibility of stories on the citizen journalism Web siteOhmyNews.com. These markers of credibility were more important informing credibility perceptions to people reading hard news, as opposedto feature fype stories. In hard news stories people cared more aboutwhether the information was correct than they did in stories that tendedto be more feature-like.

The information on the writer, particularly the presence of a pic-ture of the writer, played an important role in terms of how credible par-ticipants perceived stories to be. The more credible participants thought

Conclusion

ENHANCING PERCEIVED CREDIBILITY OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM WEB SITES 343

TABLE 6Perceived Story Engagement Means, Standard Deviations, and Results

ofthe Mann-Whitney U Test for Each GroupGroup M sd U p

Story Only (Control) 38.10 9.48

"Story+Writer Info 40.23 9.45 392.50 .394

Story+Hyperlinks 44.00 11.15 298.00 .024*

Story+Both 42.70 9.68 317.00 .049*

*p < .05

the writer looked, the higher they rated stories in terms of perceivedcredibility. Due to the nature and scope of this study, no conclusions canbe drawn about the physical characteristics that made these writers lookcredible. Previous research in this area indicates that people will ratesomeone who is similar to themselves as more credible than someonewho is not.-'^ People also tend to ascribe more credibility to people whoare more attractive in terms of physical appearance.^^

In terms of hyperlinks, contrary to expectations, very few partici-pants chose to click on them in the study. Future studies may wish toexplore why this occurred. It could be that due to the experimentalnature of the study participants did not think the links were active. Aqualitative study could be undertaken to observe users reading thestory, and ask questions as to why they chose to click, or not to click, onparticular hyperlinks.

Including information about the writer and hyperlinks served toengage the reader in the story more than if that information was notincluded. Figuring out ways to engage users in a media landscapewhere millions of choices constantly compete for users' attention is noeasy task. Including the information about the writer and the hyper-links is one way to do this.

In the study, the writer's information and pictures chosen wereonly those of Caucasian males to avoid uncontrolled variables.Subsequent studies could examine whether varying gender and ethnic-ity of the writers impact the results.

Future studies could also explore negative impacts on perceivedstory credibility. If a writer does not look credible (perhaps he/shelooks disheveled or very young) what impact does that have on the per-ceived credibility of the story? The same could be examined in terms ofbackground information about the writer. If the information presentedshows deficiencies in credentials or experience, what impact does thishave on perceived story credibility?

It would also be interesting to allow participants to further explorethe Web site. In this study, participants' movements were tightly con-trolled so confounding variables were not introduced into the study.


Links that were not directly related to the story were "turned off" so par-ticipants could not navigate to another page if they clicked on them. Infuture studies participants' movements on the site could be tracked tosee what they choose to click on and how that impacts credibility ratings.

Nearly all participants reported never contributing to a citizenjournalism Web site, which is not surprising since many were not famil-iar with citizen journalism or citizen journalism Web sites. However, inthe future, as community newspapers continue to disappear, citizen jour-nalism sites are likely to increase in prominence and stimulate moredirect participation.

The results of this research can be used to improve the perceivedcredibility of one's work not only by those who write stories on citizenjournalism Web sites, but also by those who generate other types of user-created content. Including a picture of the person who created the con-tent, information about the person, and hyperlinks are all important firststeps in improving credibility perceptions.

NOTES

1, B,J, Fogg, Jonathan Marshall, Othman Laraki, Alex Osipovich,Chris Varma, Nicholas Fang, Jyoti Paul, Akshay Rangnekar, John Shon,Preeti Sward, and Marissa Treinen, "What Makes Web Sites Credible? AReport on a Large Quantitative Study" (presentation. Proceedings of theConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2001, Seattle,WA, 2001),

2, Anthony J, Eksterowicz, Robert Roberts, and Adrian Clark,"Public Journalism and Public Knowledge," Press/Politics 3 (2,1998): 74-95; Charlotte Grimes, "Whither the Civic Journalism Bandwagon?"Press/Politics 2 (3,1997): 125-30; Jay Rosen, What Are Journalists For? (NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999),

3, Rosen, What Are Journalists For? 19,' 4, Kathy E, Gill, "How Can We Measure the Influence of the

Blogosphere?" (paper presented at WWW2004, May 17-24, New York),5, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, "We Media: How Audiences

Are Shaping the Future of News and Information," http://www,hypergene,net/wemedia/weblog,php (accessed October 20, 2005),

6, Bowman and Willis, "We Media: How Audiences Are Shaping theFuture of News and Information,"

7, Moon Ihlwan and Kenji Hall, "OhmyNews: Voices from theStreet," Business Week Online, http://www,businessweek,com/magazine/content/06_20/b3984072,htm?campaig_id=search (accessed July27, 2006),

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