Editing Credibility (section)

== In online sources ==
Credibility online has become an important topic since the mid-1990s. This is because the web has increasingly become an information resource. The Credibility and Digital Media Project @ UCSB<ref>[http://www.credibility.ucsb.edu Credibility.ucsb.edu]{{bare inl|date=February 2024}}. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150507020501/http://www.credibility.ucsb.edu/|date=7 May 2015}}.</ref> highlights recent and ongoing work in this area, including recent consideration of digital media, youth, and credibility. In addition, the Persuasive Technology Lab<ref>{{Cite web |date=2011-03-05 |title=Persuasive Tech |url=http://captology.stanford.edu/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110305123819/http://captology.stanford.edu/ |archive-date=5 March 2011 |access-date=2024-12-14}}</ref> at Stanford University has studied [[Stanford Web Credibility Project|web credibility]] and proposed the principal components of online credibility and a general theory called Prominence-Interpretation Theory.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Fogg |first=B.J. |date=2003 |title=Prominence-Interpretation Theory: Explaining How People Assess Credibility Online |url=https://credibility.stanford.edu/pdf/PITheory.pdf}}</ref>

Social media credibility is dependent on cues and heuristics. Cues used to assess credibility online are authority cues, identity cues, and bandwagon cues. Authority cues are the most influence source credibility. Authority cues are cues that let the viewer know that it is an expert source such as a university or government institution. Identity cues are peer information. Users trust information more if they can identify the person that published it the publisher is not anonymous. Users view information as more credible if a peer shared it than a stranger. 
Bandwagon cues triggers credibility processing based on the logic that "if others think it's good, so should I."<ref>Lin, X., Spence, P., Lachlan, K. (2016). Social media and credibility indicators: The effect of influence cues. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 264–271.</ref>