Assessing credibility factors of short-form social media posts: A crowdsourced online experiment

Abstract

People commonly turn to the Internet and social media for their information needs. Most popular social media platforms focus on short-form content that can be consumed rapidly. Given how fast such content spreads online, its trustworthiness and credibility have become important research areas. We investigate how different factors of social media posts influence their perceived credibility. We generated health-themed short-form social media posts, varied specific aspects of those posts, and deployed the variations on three different online crowdsourcing platforms for credibility assessment. Our quantitative data analysis reveals, for instance, how author professions related to healthcare and science increase the perceived credibility of health-themed posts. Moreover, a higher number of likes and shares increased the credibility in two out of the three platforms. Our qualitative results based on questionnaires highlight personal filtering strategies and critical thinking skills as factors that influence post credibility online. Consequently, our results encourage experts to provide information on social media and to be part of correcting any misinformation as they have higher credibility. Our work strengthens the previous body of work on the credibility of online content in general and acts as a starting point for further studies on social media post content by demonstrating a systematic, crowdsourced, and scalable approach.