MEGATRENDS AND MEDIA

MEDIA AND MARKETING GAMES OF THE OLIGARCHS
PERCEPTION OF MEDIA CREDIBILITY
Lucia Vilčeková
ABSTRACT:
Deep penetration of the Internet and traditional news sources expanding their
content into the Internet has received renewed attention in assessing media
credibility. This paper describes perception of news credibility in television,
newspapers, and online in Slovakia. A survey with 560 respondents was
conducted to determine how the credibility of various media types is perceived.
The results of the study revealed general moderate credibility of all the media
but newspapers have shown the highest overall credibility, followed by the
Internet and television, respectively. Credibility can be suggested as one of the
key factors driving the trafic of individuals to certain media. Management of
media credibility can also be considered for attracting audiences.
KEY WORDS:
media, credibility, traditional media vs. new media
1 Introduction: Literature review
Nowadays, people have a vast choice of information sources. But in many
cases, certain information appears to be “better,” or “more trustworthy”
than other information. The challenge that most people then face is
to judge which information is the more credible. 1 O’Keefe deined
credibility as “judgments made by a perceiver (e.g., a message recipient)
concerning the believability of a communicator”. 2 Wathen and Burkell
deine credibility as ‘believability’. 3 In general, credible information
sources may be described as trustworthy and therefore credibility is
closely related to a general concept of trust. Communication researchers
measure the media trust by exploring the source credibility and the
message credibility.
1 HILLIGOSS, B., SOO YUNG, R.: Developing a unifying framework of
credibility assessment: Construct, heuristics, and interaction in context.
In Information Processing & Management, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 4, p. 1475.
2 O‘KEEFE, D. J.: Persuasion: Theory and Research. Newbury Park, CA : Sage,
1990, p. 133.
3 WATHEN, C. N., BURKELL, J.: Believe it or not: factors inluencing credibility
on the Web. In: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, 2002, Vol. 53, No. 2, p. 135.
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