Believing in Credibility Measures: Reviewing Credibility Measures in Media Research From 1951 to 2018

Abstract

Although credibility has been a key concept in communication research for decades, there still is no consensus on its conceptualization and measurement. Indeed, scholars have criticized the lack of theory-driven approaches, conceptual inconsistencies between sub-constructs of credibility, and the problems of applying them to the contemporary media environment. This literature review of quantitative studies of credibility published between 1951 and 2018 explores state-of-the-art definitions and measures of credibility (N = 259). While most studies make a conceptual distinction between source, media, and message credibility, measurement scales do not follow this traditional trinity. Instead, we propose moving toward a dual-credibility model.