Source Credibility

Source credibility is an ancient topic that has been the focus of renewed and sustained research in the last three‐quarters of a century. Although originally situated in the context of persuasion and conceived as the believability of a source, research has revealed source credibility to be a multidimensional concept consisting of many factors, the most enduring of which include a source's expertise and trustworthiness. Decades of research have shown that higher credibility perceptions predict greater persuasion and attitude change. Research on source credibility has also shown that in addition to source, characteristics of the message, medium, and information receiver impact information evaluation, as well as attitude and behavior change. The Internet and social media have presented new challenges to identifying sources and evaluating them effectively. Information‐processing theories have been invoked to understand the ways in which people evaluate contemporary information sources and research has shown that people use both analytical and heuristic evaluation strategies.