Motivated skepticism as a formative factor for credibility measures of television news in India: A Structural equation Modeling approach

Abstract

Trustworthiness, accuracy and believability are the most common indicators of news credibility measures. The impact of selective exposure, i.e. audience choosing content similar to their beliefs, on News Credibility is generally not considered in this context. This paper suggests that perceptions of News Credibility are influenced by selective exposure. This means people judge attitude-consistent content and sources as more credible. One explanation for selective exposure is ‘Motivated Skepticism’: we define a five-item construct for this construct. We hypothesize a Structural Equation Model with the latent construct Motivated Skepticism as a formative factor for News Credibility estimation of Indian television news channels. An online survey of 351 respondents from two Indian cities measures the goodness-of-fit and construct validity of the hypothesized SEM model. News Credibility is reported as a two- factor, second-order structure measured by Message Attributes and Channel Attributes, with Motivated Skepticism as a formative factor.

Keywords

• news credibility
• selective exposure
• indian television channels
• motivated skepticism
• sem