Which cues are credible? – The relative importance and interaction of expertise, likes, shares, pictures and involvement while assessing the credibility of politicians’ Facebook postings

Abstract

In recent years social media channels have become increasingly powerful tools for any kind of communication. Nowadays even political information and news are often solely consumed on social media. Besides the promising opportunities of direct interaction and real-time updates, the lack of gate keepers raises credibility concerns. Therefore, it is crucial to better understand how recipients assess if a message is believable or not. Approaches like the MAIN Model [26] and the Rule Concept [12] claim that source, message or meta-informational cues are able to serve as anchors for evaluations. Aiming to comprehensively investigate the role and interplay of cues available in social media communication, an online experiment (N = 341; 1366 postings) tested the impact of source expertise, likes, shares, pictures and topic involvement on evaluations of politicians’ Facebook postings. Results revealed source cues to lead to higher credibility judgments, whereas higher likes and shares unexpectedly decreased credibility. Against expectations, recipients’ involvement and message agreement did not moderate the effects.