Social Recommendation, Source Credibility, and Recency

Abstract

A 2 (number of diggs: a few, many) × 2 (source credibility: low, high) × 2 (recency: more recent, less recent) between-subjects experiment was conducted to explore how three news cues individually and interactively affected perception of credibility, newsworthiness, click likelihood, and sharing behavioral intentions toward the news feed on a social bookmarking website. The findings indicated that social recommendation in the form of number of diggs was the primary factor to influence perceived news credibility and click likelihood. The influence of source credibility was dependent upon the effect of other cues. There was also a cue-cumulation effect of source credibility and recency on perceived newsworthiness.