College Students’ Credibility Judgments on Healthy Diet Information on Social Media

Croatian adolescents’ credibility judgments in making everyday life decisions

“…The credibility of acquired information is usually judged by the characteristics of the information sources that make the sources believable (Rieh, 2010: 1341). In this study, most of the responses to the question about reasons for believing that the acquired information was credible pointed to the competence and trustworthiness of the information sources, echoing previous studies among young adults (Kolarić et al, 2021; Quaidoo et al, 2018). It seems that older youth understand that information sources characterized by expertise, experience, education and trustworthiness can be trusted for the provision of credible information.…”

“…With regard to using social media for acquiring helpful information, the students reported using socially generated cues such as popularity and reputation in the user community to judge the credibility of the information obtained. Such information evaluation practices were found by Fergie et al (2013), who investigated teenagers’ engagement with health-related information on social media and found that they used the number of views, likes-to-dislikes ratio and user ratings to judge the credibility of information– practices that were proved in a study among college students in the context of healthy diet information (Kolarić et al, 2021). Such practices have been described as a bandwagon heuristic, referring to judging information to be credible if other people think that it is believable, as it requires less cognitive effort than careful evaluation of the information (Sundar, 2008).…”

“…Bowler et al (2015) asked teenagers to rank the credibility, accuracy, reliability and helpfulness of answers to eating disorder questions on a social questions-and-answers site, and reveal that they appreciated encouragement, guidance and help from fellow sufferers who were in the same situation. Kolarić et al (2021) found that when seeking healthy diet information on social media, young people appreciated motivating and friendly interactions. Although young people’s need to get help from information sources who they feel close to is understandable, it needs to be said that basing credibility judgments only on the criteria that refer to the quality of a relationship can lead to confusing the quality of the relationship with the quality of the information.…”

“…Some studies carried out among college students and young adults show that the most important credibility judgment criteria are the author’s expertise, experience and ability to provide verified information. They trust sources who are perceived as trustworthy, educated and experienced, and as experts and professionals (Kolarić et al, 2021; Quaidoo et al, 2018). In a specific context such as health, empathy is added to this dimension of credibility as it is important to individuals who need health information (Gray et al, 2005).…”

“…Moreover, college students employ some specific information-seeking strategies to deal with concerns related to the credibility of online information (Fergie et al, 2013; Rieh and Hilligoss, 2008). One of these strategies is to verify the credibility of the information by checking the consistency of information from multiple sources– for example, comparing it with information from other websites (Kolarić et al, 2021; Rieh and Hilligoss, 2008).…”