Unpacking credibility evaluation on digital media: a case for interpretive qualitative approaches

Malhotra, Pranav, Hall, Natalie-Anne, Xia, Yiping, Stahl, Louise, Chadwick, Andrew, Vaccari, Cristian and Lawson, Brendan T 2025. Unpacking credibility evaluation on digital media: a case for interpretive qualitative approaches. Annals of the International Communication Association , wlaf008. 10.1093/anncom/wlaf008

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Abstract

We argue for more serious consideration of interpretive qualitative approaches in research on information credibility evaluation in digitally mediated contexts. Through reviewing existing literature on credibility and drawing on our own experiences of conducting research projects on credibility evaluation in diverse cultural contexts, we contend that interpretive qualitative approaches help researchers develop a much-needed communicative and relationally and culturally situated understanding of credibility, complicating dominant quantitative and psychologically-oriented accounts. We detail how these approaches add important nuance to how credibility is conceptualized and operationalized and reveal the complexity of credibility evaluation as a social process. We also outline how they aid researchers studying misinformation engagement, especially in popular bounded social media places like private groups and chats. The approach we develop here provides new insights that can inform ongoing global efforts by researchers, policy makers, and citizens to more fully understand the complexity of information verification online.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/, Type: cc-by-nc
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	2380-8985
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	16 July 2025
Date of Acceptance:	28 May 2025
Last Modified:	16 Jul 2025 10:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/179864

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