A Little Bird Told Me, So I Didn't Believe It: Twitter, Credibility, and Issue Perceptions

Abstract

This article investigates how media use of the microblogging tool Twitter affects perceptions of the issue covered and the credibility of the information. In contrast to prior studies showing that ordinary blogs are often judged credible, especially by their users, data from 2 experiments show that Twitter is considered less credible than various forms of stories posted on a newspaper Web site, and fails to convey importance as well as a newspaper or blog.

Keywords:

• Credibility
• Information Seeking
• Twitter

Notes

Note. Scores shown are estimated means with age, gender, Twitter use, and student status as covariates. Means not sharing a subscript significantly differ on pairwise comparisons (p < .05).

Note. Scores shown are estimated means with age, gender, Twitter use, and student status as covariates. Means not sharing a subscript significantly differ on pairwise comparisons (p < .05).

To save space, we present the full results for these analyses in this note, and we describe only a few critical findings. For source credibility, there are two models. The first includes the measure where participants indicated Twitter was a great way to get information, along with the relevant interaction term. Unstandardized coefficients and standard errors, in parentheses, in this model were as follows: age, −0.06 (0.03); gender −0.07 (0.38); student status, 0.60 (0.63); Twitter is a great source, 0.04 (0.15); Twitter condition, −1.85 (1.04); great Source × Condition, 0.37 (0.21); and total R ² = .26. The second model includes the measure where participants indicated following a number of other users on Twitter, along with the relevant interaction term. The coefficients and standard errors, in parentheses, for this model were as follows: age, −0.06 (0.03); gender −0.07 (0.38); student status, 0.60 (0.63); follow others, 0.04 (0.15); Twitter condition, −1.85 (1.04); Follow × Condition, 0.37 (0.21); and total R ² = .26. For message credibility, there were also two models. For the model with “Twitter is a great way to get information,” the coefficients and standard errors, in parentheses, were as follows: age, −0.03 (0.02); gender −0.05 (0.36); student status, −0.15 (0.60); Twitter is a great source, −0.04 (0.14); Twitter condition, −1.84 (0.82); great Source × Condition, 0.33 (0.20); and total R ² = .16. For the model with “I follow a number of other users,” the coefficients and standard errors, in parentheses, were as follows: age, −0.05 (0.03); gender, −0.29 (0.38); student status, 0.59 (0.61); follow others, 0.16 (0.13); Twitter condition, −1.69 (0.99); Follow × Condition, 0.25 (0.18); and total R ² = .28.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Schmierbach

Mike Schmierbach (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 2004) is an assistant professor in the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University.

Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch

Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2011) is a doctoral candidate in the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University.