The effects of journalistic transparency on credibility assessments and engagement intentions

Transparency is an oft-cited remedy for the public’s lack of confidence in the news media. Yet scant empirical evidence exists to support this claim. This article presents a test of the relationship between increased journalistic transparency and credibility evaluations of a news organization. Exper...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournalism (London, England) Vol. 22; no. 4; pp. 901 - 918
Main Authors Curry, Alexander L, Stroud, Natalie Jomini
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.04.2021
Subjects
news
trust
website
experiment
transparency
Credibility
objectivity
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ISSN1464-8849
1741-3001
DOI10.1177/1464884919850387

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Summary:Transparency is an oft-cited remedy for the public’s lack of confidence in the news media. Yet scant empirical evidence exists to support this claim. This article presents a test of the relationship between increased journalistic transparency and credibility evaluations of a news organization. Experimental results suggest that increasing transparency (by providing news consumers with information about why and how a story was written, details about the story’s author, etc.) leads to an increase in credibility evaluations and intentions to engage with news. These results hold across the three different article topics used in our experiment and regardless of the participants’ political ideology. Implications for news organizations and contributions to theory are discussed.
ISSN:1464-8849
1741-3001
DOI:10.1177/1464884919850387