인터넷 뉴스 미디어의 신뢰도에 관한 실험 연구 = Experimental study of user credibility on Internet news media

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of the study is to examine a causal relationship between interactivity and users’ credibility in Internet news media. To achieve the purpose, the study examined the factors influencing the credibility. And, the credibility factors of traditional news media were analyzed and compared. Finally, this study was interested in examining a causal relationship between interactivity and Internet news credibility.
An experiment was conducted to measure Internet news credibility under two different conditions. One news site has a higher level of interactive features, such as a search engine, e-mails to individual reporters, opinion forum, and so on. The other has a lower level of interactivity, only including an e-mail to webmaster. A total of 12 credibility items were measured for this study.
The study found four major factors explain the credibility of Internet news media. They ares journalistic value, public responsibility, sensational- ism, and fairness. On the other hand, three factors which affect on the credibility of traditional news media were journalistic value, public responsi- bility, and market-oriented journalism. This implies that while more various factors explain the Internet news credibility, mainly traditional journalistic value plays a significant role in the formation of traditional new credibility. Finally, given that no significant relationship was found between inter- activity of Internet news media and credibility, this study discusses some reasons: first, interactivity might not be an important predictor variable on Internet news credibility; second, the experimental design of the study has some methodological limitations, such as being restricted to one exposure or not having much difference in two levels of experimental treatment.