Predictors of credibility perceptions: The moderating role of political ideology

At a time when historically low trust in the credibility of news and information has profound implications for citizens and the state of democracy, it is perhaps more imperative than ever for researchers to investigate and better understand how perceptions of message credibility are formed. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ in which belief in actionable information was complicated by political ideologies, the current study examined how personal knowledge about COVID-19 and one’s own political ideology was related to message credibility perceptions. Findings from two cross-sectional surveys show that knowledge about COVID-19 positively predicted perceived message credibility among respondents. Moreover, the effect of knowledge on perceived message credibility was the greatest among the most liberal respondents, while that same effect decreased the more conservative a respondent was, yet increased knowledge had a non-significant impact amongst the most conservative individuals in our sample.

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Predictors of credibility perceptions: The moderating role of political ideology

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