Trust and Journalistic Transparency Online

Abstract

ABSTRACT Transparency has become a central norm in journalism and it is deemed to increase audiences’ perceptions of credibility, legitimacy and trust in the news media. While a number of studies have sought to support these claims by primarily testing the effects of transparency on credibility perceptions, this research explores how audiences’ trust in journalism is impacted by various features and types of transparency on the news item level. Two experiments were conducted. The findings of the first experiment suggest that transparency in its current form may not increase news consumers’ trust. The second experiment explored possible explanations for the findings of the first study. The results of the second experiment indicate that while audiences value transparency in reporting, they struggle to recognize and recall the presence of transparency and transparency features within a news online article. Overall, the findings of the two studies suggest first, the need to reconceptualize how audiences perceive and process transparency information and second, to include transparency information as part of the news story.