Artefact Description
The fifth artefact gathered 3 professional news websites and 3 citizen journalist websites and provided a screenshot and short description for each. Participants then had to answer a questionnaire about the trustworthiness and credibility of each site.
Artefact Analysis and Evaluation
The previous artefact looked at Citizen Journalism on a small scale, reporting on a particular subject. The results showed that citizen journalist sites can be successful alongside their official counterparts, largely due to the freedom they have to post opinionated articles. I wanted to further my citizen journalist research by looking at its consumer perception.
I provided participants with screenshots and a description of three well known, professional news websites (BBC News, The Independent, The Sun) as well as 3 of the most renowned citizen journalist websites (WikiNews, Drudge Report, OhMyNews), before asking questions about their awareness of the sites and how trustworthy/credible they thought each site was.
I used this method in order to provide a snapshot of each of the websites, without showing any bias. In terms of awareness, nearly all participants had heard of the professional news websites, whereas the only citizen journalist site participants were aware of was WikiNews, with nearly half being aware of it.
However, the results showed that awareness doesn’t guarantee users, with only 2/29 and 4/30 saying they actively use The Independent’s and The Sun’s website respectively.
Regarding consumer perception, BBC News and The Independent scored very highly for trustworthiness and credibility, whereas all of the citizen journalist websites scored relatively low. Some reasons given for this included less educated contributors, the fact that anyone can contribute and poor aesthetics in the case of Drudge Report. Interestingly, The Sun also scored very low for trustworthiness, proving that being well established doesn’t necessarily guarantee trust; something which my last artefact’s results suggested.
In conclusion, Drudge Report proves that unappealing aesthetics can directly affect how credible a news website is perceived. I also found that consumers will doubt the credibility of a citizen journalist website as they assume that their contributors are less educated.
