Assessing Source Credibility On Social Media–––An Electronic Word-Of-Mouth Communication Perspective
Year: 2015
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This study aimed to discover, develop, and understand people's perception of others' credibility in the context of social media in marketing communication.In communication, how people perceive information source directly affects whether or not they accept information, which in turn affects the communication effect.In the offline world, word-of-mouth communication was believed to be extremely credible, therefore its commercial value has been explored since early last century.However, new technologies have expanded communication from offline to cyberspace.Electronic word-of-mouth communication (eWOM), based on social media, brought more variables to marketing communication, considering its communication magnitude.Thus, how people perceived different "hubs" (popular figures on social media), with the intervention of social media, became significant in marketing communication.Based on traditional measures of source credibility, the new tentative measures of source credibility on social media have been proposed.How the perceived source credibility on social media was affected by other factors, e.g., involvement in the Internet and Twitter, and different product settings, has also been examined in this study.To validate the tentative new measures of source credibility on social media and test the proposed hypotheses, an online survey in a mid-sized university was conducted to collect data.Structural equation model was employed to analyze data.The results showed that source credibility on social media was a mixed second-order construct.Individual source credibility and brand source credibility included six dimensions---competence, trustworthiness, social tie, attractiveness (attribute for brand source credibility), dynamism, and technology affordance. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: STUDY OVERVIEWTwitter has become an important news medium in recent years.The 140-character length limit of Twitter posts not only facilitates rapid expansion and success of fast news in the battle for attention, but also accelerates information diffusion on social media forums.However, given the rapid and uncontrollable spread of information on Twitter, an authoritative and credible information source in this environment is particularly important.Hoaxes on Twitter can have severe consequences.For example, a Twitter hoax in April, 2013 claimed that President Obama was injured in an explosion at the White House, which resulted in a 150 points Dow Jones Industrial Average fall, evaporating a $136 billion market value in minutes (Chozick & Perlroth, 2013).Even though people soon learned that the fake tweet was posted by hackers through the Associated Press (AP) account and the domestic market rebounded, it caused panic in the global markets and some investors lost money.Another hoax news was put up in May, 2013.Five-time NBA champ, Kobe Bryant, was said to retire in the fake news posted by a hoax Twitter account pretending to be Yahoo's well-known sports writer Adrian Wojnarowski.No market plunge occurred this time.But people did believe that Bryant was going to end his career after 17 seasons.The rumor ended only with Bryant's rebuttal tweet, "Really?? Me.Retire?? Soon, but not yet!Vino still has work to do." Fake news on Twitter exerts great influence on us whether we are aware of it or not.In effect, it is the sources that play a vital role in the process of information dissemination because only when people believe the sources will they accept and spread the information provided by such sources.Then again, why people believe these social media sources to be credible and spread these rumors like they are real news?Now, what if a real sports writer, or AP or ESPN reporter
Author: Xiao Hu
Institution: Bowling Green State University
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2521360552