Credibility and Enjoyment through Data? Effects of Statistical Information and Data Visualizations on Message Credibility and Reading Experience

ABSTRACT

News organizations, journalists, and scholars are searching for ways to increase the perceived message credibility of the stories they produce. With the aim to evaluate the potentials of data-based storytelling formats, we build on message credibility research and investigate how features of message content such as the use of different presentation formats of statistical information and data visualizations affect news users’ message credibility judgements as well as their reading experience. We conducted two online experiments to detect the influences of percentages (e.g., 33%) and verbalized ratios (e.g., one out of three) as well as static and interactive data visualizations. Results of both studies indicate that the format of statistical information and the interactivity of data visualizations do not affect message credibility and reading experience. However, the perceived interactivity of the graphic has an impact on the reading experience. One conclusion is that the extra work involved in creating interactive graphics does not seem to pay off directly in terms of message credibility and improving the reading experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Message credibility
• reading experience
• data journalism
• statistical information
• data visualization
• experimental study

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The excluded items are: “While reading the article I was able to see the described events in front of me.”; “During the reading I could imagine something by the content of the text.” (A complete list of all items of all used subscales can be found at Appel et al. 2002).