Liteature Review

Message Source
People’s acceptance of information and ideas was partly dependent on the message
source (Berlo, Lemert, & Mertz, 1969). Tez

The influence of source on communication effectiveness was labeled variously in previous

research, such as prestige, charisma (Berlo et al., 1969), ethos (Berlo et al., 1969; McCroskey,
1966), credibility (O’Keefe, 2002), source credibility (McCroskey & Teven, 1999), message
source credibility, perceived credibility (Gunther, 1992), information source credibility (Berlo
et al., 1969), and perceived source credibility (Spence, Lachlan, Westerman, & Spates, 2013).
Tez

McCroskey (1966) described source credibility/ethos as perceiver’s attitude toward a source.

Tez

O’Keefe (2002) defined it as “judgments made by a perceiver (e.g., a message recipient)

concerning the believability of a communicator.” Tez

Based on the research of persuasive public speech, Hovland, Janis, and Kelley (1953) pointed
out that the source initiating the communication and the cues as to the trustworthiness,
intentions, and affiliations of the source in the process of communication, had an important
impact on the effectiveness of communication. However, it should be noted that they only
identified trustworthiness and expertness as factors of source credibility.

Source credibility has been widely studied in diverse contexts—such as in public speech,
political campaigning, interpersonal persuasion communication, mainstream public health
message communication (Spence et al., 2013), psychology, sociology, and education
(McCroskey, 1966). Tez

Early research on source credibility was mainly conducted within a public speech context
which mainly focused on interpersonal communication (Tewksbury, Jensen, & Coe, 2011). Tez

The influence of source was source credibility, which was believed to be a changeable
perception, not a static, intrinsic property/attribute of a source (Berlo et al, 1969; O’Keefe,
2002) tez

Source credibility research focused on how people perceived the characteristics of a source in
terms of expertise, trustworthiness, and other aspects. Tez
Additionally, it was worth noting that the traditional line between media and source became
blurred because of the convergence of information production and consumption in the new
media era. In this sense, everyone in social media was both producer and consumer of content;
every account was a source producing information; meanwhile, it was also a medium channel
disseminating information.

The hybrid phenomenon of producer and consumer was conceptualized as prosumption

(Toffler, 1980), which directly triggered the shift from the traditional notion of
information/news “gatekeeping” to “gatewatching” Bruns, 2008). Tez

Source credibility on social media was not only determined by the characteristics of the exact
person or organization behind an account, but also affected by the attributes of the social media
platform, such as interactivity and sociability enabled by social media. They were all playing
important roles as integral parts in establishing source credibility on social media. Thus,
establishing measures for source credibility on social media could not overlook the attributes
of social media. Tez

perceived source credibility was defined as the evaluation of a source by the information
recipient (Haley, 1996), the individual’s characteristics might have direct effect on people’s
perception. In other words, individual characteristics might predict people’s perceived source
credibility. Tez

Two factors—“Authoritativeness” and “Character”—were identified by factor analysis

in McCroskey’s study. Whether a communication sender was reliable, informed, qualified (on
certain topics), intelligent, valuable, and expert were all included under “authoritativeness”
dimension as indicators. While, whether a sender was honest, friendly, pleasant, unselfish, nice,
and virtuous were selected as indicators of “character.” He excluded “goodwill” (the intention
to care perceiver) as one dimension because the indicators of goodwill were subsumed under
“authoritativeness” and “character” dimensions. Tez

Ohanian (1990) proposed that celebrity endorser credibility was structured by three
dimensions—attractiveness, trustworthiness, and expertise (see Table 3.1 below). He selected
attractive/unattractive, classy/not classy, beautiful/ugly, elegant/plain, and sexy/not sexy to
measure attractiveness dimension. Dependable-undependable, honest/dishonest,
reliable/unreliable, sincere/insincere, and trustworthy/untrustworthy were identified to measure
trustworthiness dimension. Expertise dimension included expert/not an expert,
experienced/inexperienced, knowledgeable/unknowledgeable, qualified/unqualified, and
skilled/unskilled. Tez

Both McCroskey and Berlo’s measures for source credibility were in the context of faceto-
face interpersonal communication within the persuasive communication framework. Realizing
the importance and impact of perceived source credibility on people’s attitudes and behaviors,
marketing communication scholars started constructing source credibility measures in the field
of marketing communication. tez
Confirming the three primary credibility dimensions of Ohanian (1990), Haley (1996) proposed
the concept of organizational credibility. In his study, consumers identified corporate image
and prior performance as important indicators of trustworthiness dimension. “Recognizability,
a reputation of offering a quality product/service, being well managed, treating employees with
respect, and a history of prosocial involvement with issues,” were all considered as corporate
image and prior performance. Another dimension—expertise—for organization credibility was
defined as the extent to which a company was knowledgeable about issues related to itself or
consumers. tez

It seemed that there was no generalized and transsituational measure for the construct (Berlo,
1969; O’Keefe, 2002); the conceptual structure, or dimensions of source credibility might vary
from circumstance to circumstance (King, 1976

there was an agreement on two dimensions of source credibility (McCroskey & Teven, 1999;
O’Keefe, 2002) as shown in previous studies. 1. Expertise. The expertise dimension, also called
“competence,” “expertness,” “authoritativeness,” or “qualification,” aims to measure if sources
have the capability to know the truth. Hovland, Janis, and Kelley (1953) defined expertise as
“the extent to which a communicator is perceived to be a source of valid assertions.” Measures
such as “experienced/inexperienced, informed/uninformed, trained/untrained,
qualified/unqualified, skilled/unskilled, intelligent/unintelligent, and expert/not expert” are
commonly used to represent this dimension 2. Trustworthiness. The trustworthiness
dimension, also called “character,” “safety,” or “personal integrity,” measures to what extent a
source is inclined to tell the truth if he or she knows it. Hovland, Janis, and Kelley (1953)
defined trustworthiness as “the degree of confidence in the communicator's intent to
communicate the assertions he considers most valid.” Scales of this dimension are like
“honest/dishonest, trustworthy/untrustworthy, open-minded/closed-minded, just/unjust,
fair/unfair, and unselfish/selfish.” (O'Keefe, 2002). TEZ

Among the scant research on source credibility on social media, a recent study (Spence,
Lachlan, Westerman, & Spates, 2013) investigating perceived credibility of sources on social
media used health information to test the relationship between perceived source credibility and
ethnicity. The measure of credibility, containing three separate dimensions—competence,
goodwill/caring, and trustworthiness—was used (McCroskey & Teven, 1999) in this study. Tez

New Dimensions in Social Media Context

First, in social media, especially on Twitter, where people were more focused on information
collection and dissemination, most of their followings and followers were weak ties. The
scalability and diffusion scope on social media was much larger than in traditional
communication. In this case, a source was always facing hundreds and thousands of weak-tie
friends, instead of just a few strong-tie friends. Thus, the information and subjects they
communicated were also expanded, rather than limited in some specific issues. tez

The old dimension “goodwill,” which was measured by “care about me,” “has my interests at
heart,” “self-centered,” “concerned with me,” “insensitive,” and “not understanding,” was no
longer accurate and appropriate to use in the context of social media. Because these indicators
and goodwill factor were established and validated in the specific context created by the
scholars; they could not be applicable to every sources, especially not applicable to weak ties
on social media. Therefore, this factor was excluded from measures in this study. Tez

On social media, it was not necessary for people to know each other physically to be friends.
For the “hubs” on social media especially, they were well known and followed by many
ordinary people, who were mostly strangers to them either online or offline. But for the ordinary
people, they knew the “hubs” on social media because the “hubs” were public figures. Hence
attractiveness should still be an important factor for individual source credibility on social
media. However, for an organization, attractiveness, which mainly measured the physical
attributes and personality of an individual, was not that prefect as a dimension of organizational
source credibility.

But (Haley, 1996, p.31). Hence, for organizations, attractiveness could be replaced by
organization attributes. Tez

It was hard to make a judgment of source credibility as to goodwill based on tweets or other
content from a source. However, people could judge on the speaking and behavior styles of
different sources, which were referred to as “dynamism” by Berlo et al. (1969). On social media,
where people physically knew little about each other, this dynamism factor might have a great
influence on source credibility.

TEZ

Social Tie Strength

Network analysis (Granovetter, 1973) assumed society was structured into high-connected
clusters, which were made up of strong social ties, like family and close friends. Weak links,
such as acquaintances, were weak social ties, which connected these clusters together “keeping
them from being isolated from the rest of the world (Barabási, 2002).” TEZ

At most times, weak ties played an important role in people’s social activities by spreading
words and getting information from the outside world, although strong ties were more
influential for people than weak ties (Barabási, 2002; Brown & Reingen, 1987). TEZ

In the virtual community, people were connected by “friend” or “follow” functions of social
media. In the virtual network, there were a few “hubs” that were connected with numerous
people and more ordinary people who were connected with a few “friends. TEZ

People were all connected for a reason but with different closeness. The relevance of a source
(or an account on social media) to people determined the social tie strength. The strength of
people’s social tie on social media, or the “logical association” between a source and people
had an influence on people’s perceived credibility of this source (Haley, 1996) TEZ
Taking Twitter for example, people were surrounded by their friends, and more “followers.”
Every account could be viewed as a source. Friends and family were strong ties, while “friends”
connected by strong ties were weak ties.

TEZ

Based on network theory, Brown and Reingen (1987) proposed two-level WOM behavior—
micro- and macro-level. They argued that people’s WOM behavior occurred either within their
strong social ties at the micro-level or among weak social ties in macro-level. They found that
social ties strength provided useful explanation as to how information was accepted within and
among “clusters/groups.” Tie strength was determined by several variables, such as, perceived
importance of social relation, frequency of social contact, and type of social relations (e.g.,
friends, family, or acquaintances) (Brown & Reingen, 1987; Granovetter, 1973). TEZ

Technology Affordance

Except ignoring the new social media context for source credibility and social ties’ influences,
extant research also overlooked the influence of system-generated cues (or technology) on
source credibility. TEZ

In a study of source credibility on Twitter, based on MAIN model and social information
processing theory, researchers (Westerman, Spence, Van Der Heide, 2012) proposed that
system-generated cues, like followers and followings on Twitter, might affect perceived
credibility of Twitter page owners. The results indicated that both the dimensions of source
credibility—competence and trustworthiness—had an inverted “U” curvilinear pattern with the
number of followers Too few and too many followers both resulted in less credibility in the
competence and trustworthiness of Twitter page owners. It was expected that fewer followers
triggered less perceived credibility. However, beyond expectation, more followers also reduced
source credibility. They found that lesser the ratio of followers to followings, the more
credibility given to Twitter page owners TEZ

Tseng and Fogg (1999) proposed four types of credibility, two of which were referred to
superficial aspects of the site : reputed credibility and surface credibility. The reputed credibility
referred to the labels or markers on the site of the source’s expertise and reputation. In the case
of Twitter, it included the verified accounts on Twitter, which indicated accounts’ identity.
Surface credibility was more abstract, which described how much a perceiver believed a source
based on inspection of the site and profile. The basic idea was people made their credibility
judgment with the help of markers/labels generated by technology/computer/system. TEZ

Wathen and Burkell (2002) operationalized surface credibility and pointed out that
surface characteristics involved appearance/presentation and information organization, and
interface design elements, such as interactivity, navigability, and download speed TEZ

Sundar (2008) demonstrated in his study of youth’s assessment of credibility that surface
features of the interface, which was referred as technology affordances, had a profound
influence on young people’s judgment of credibility. TEZ
The technology affordances in digital media triggered cognitive heuristics to affect people’s
assessments of credibility by offering auto-generated cues or markers on social media. A typical
example was the number of followers on Twitter, which suggested whether an account/source
was popular or not and affected people’s impression (Tong, Van Der Heide, Langwell, &
Walther, 2008; Utz, 2010). TEZ

Sundar (2008) argued that because of the excessive information online, today’s youth more and
more depended on cues/markers transmitted by technological features to make snap decisions
about the credibility and quality of information they consumed. Based on previous studies and
analysis, Sundar (2008) proposed MAIN model embracing four broad technology
affordances—Modality (M), Agency (A), Interactivity (I), and Navigability (N). TEZ

The main argument of MAIN model was that people’s perceptions were affected by the
presence of technology affordances on an interface (Sundar et al., 2015) MAIN model assumed
that technology affordances served as cues, which triggered people’s cognitive heuristics. TEZ

Technology affordances trigger heuristics in two ways: 1) “its presence on the interface can
transmit cues, both about its functionality and the designer’s intent; and/or 2) by adaptively
gathering information for the user in the form of metrics that reflect its operation (Sundar et al.,
2015).” For example, the number of followers to the account could be a criterion to judge the
owner’s popularity and credibility. Based on the cognitive heuristics, people made snap
decisions on quality, which directly determined their credibility judgment. TEZ

Sundar (2008) proposed four broad technology affordances. Firstly, media technology can
affect people’s perception of a source through heuristics triggered by modality cues. In other
words, how information is conveyed (e.g., text, picture, and audiovisual) can either enhance or
diminish perceived credibility of information. For example, people are more likely to trust
visual information over textual information (Sundar et al., 2015). TEZ

Secondly, agency is affordance pertaining to the source of media content. In the traditional
media era, professional gatekeepers (e.g., reporters and editors) served as agency, while in
digital era, either the technology itself (e.g., robot) or the user can serve as a source on social
media with the technology affordances (e.g., modality, interactivity, and navigability). TEZ

the sense of “user control” provide users greater sense of “self as source,” which shapes users’
perception of content quality and source credibility (Sundar et al., 2015). TEZ

the identity of sources on social media was murky, people were always suspecting whether a
source was a real person behind the device. A mass of computer-controlled accounts pervading
social media directly resulted in the decreasing credibility and trust in sources and information.
The computercontrolled accounts, also called “zombie fans,” pretended to be a real account and
disseminated ads and junk information on social media. The social presence heuristic, afforded
by the interface cues which imply whether a user is interacting with a real person or intelligent
entity, affected people’s perception of source and media content on social media where
emphasize communication and interactivity, the accounts operated by a human agent were more
attractive than those machinecontrolled accounts (Edwards, et al., 2014). TEZ
A verified blue badge offered by social media as well as active interactions with
followers/followings could all boost a source’s credibility. the cues suggested expertise of a
source could trigger the authority heuristic, which makes the source more credible
in certain subject matter (Hu & Sundar, 2010). TEZ

The interactivity afforded by social media technology not only enable users to customize their
own websites, but also support the interactive activities between users and their audiences. The
interactivity, modality, and navigability affordances create user a great sense of “self as source.”
In the context of social media in this study, interactivity could be the way/style a source
communicated with “fans”/ “followers,” such as, whether a source was responsive to
conversations on Twitter and how frequently, and whether a source was always telepresent or
not. TEZ

Study (Westerman, Spence, & Van, 2014) has showed that recency of updates impacted source
credibility on Twitter. Navigability cues mattered how interface features, which suggested
transportation from one location to another, influenced people’s credibility assessment. For
example, the navigability tools which enable users easily browse a site can trigger help
heuristic, which in turn predispose users to be positive toward the account owners or designers
(Sundar et al., 2015). TEZ

Research found that the more prior knowledge, the more issue-relevant thoughts occur, the
more elaborative cognition, and then the less influence of peripheral cues (such as source
likability) (Laczniak, Muehling, & Carlson, 1991; O’Keefe, 2002; Wood & Kallgren, 1988).
TEZ

In the context of eWOM communication on social media, people’s prior knowledge used to
make judgments on sources should not only include their overall knowledge and experience of
different products, but also include their familiarity to the new technical environment created
by the Internet. TEZ

Furthermore, communication medium effects research suggested the variations in the

medium of communication such as the difference between a face-to-face communication and a
computer-mediated communication, directly affected persuasive effects (O’Keefe, 2002). TEZ

Moreover, according to persuasion communication research, receivers’ factors, such as gender,

self-esteem, and contextual factors directly affected attitudes and consequently influenced
persuasive outcomes (O’Keefe, 2002). TEZ

Sex difference in persuasibility was much studied in persuasion communication, and women
were found more easily persuaded than men (Becker, 1986; Eagly & Carli, 1981) TEZ

the credibility measures for individuals and organizations on social media are different from
those in the offline world in a communication. One of the reasons is the mediation of social
media between information sender and recipient as added additional variables when people
perceive information senders in terms of credibility. TEZ

The traditional measure for source credibility was created in the context of face-to-face
communication. It included scales measuring people’s expertise, ethics, and physical
appearance. However, on social media, an individual’s credibility not only hinges on the
dimensions created previously in an offline communication, but is also determined by people’s
perceived relevance of a source, and others factors arising from the technology. The measure
for organization credibility on social media is also different from individual social media
credibility. It measures an organization’s credibility from its professionalism, and prior
reputation and image, etc.. TEZ