Credibility of messages, studied in the communication, psychology, sociology, political science, and other literatures, is generally defined as a collection of attributes of messages that make the message content or their senders valued relative to the information imparted. The attributes generally refer to either the sources of the messages’ content or the authenticity of their
The importance of credibility in human communication had already been recognized long before modern communication research emerged as a scientific discipline. For ancient rhetoricians like Aristotle or Cicero it was self-evident that the credibility of a communicator had an important impact on the persuasiveness of his performance. At the beginning of the twentieth century credibility
Credibility is a central professional value for journalists. For audiences, perceived credibility of the media affects choices of and responses to the news. Scholars and journalists disagree about what constitutes credibility, but agree that it relates primarily to the truthfulness and accuracy of the facts journalists report. Credible journalism is reliable and believable. However, scholars