Distribution and Evaluation of News on Portals: How News Use and Engagement Influence Portal News Credibility

Distribution and Evaluation of News on Portals: How News Use and Engagement Influence Portal News Credibility

Purpose: This study aims to understand if heterogeneous news is evenly consumed and distributed on portals as it examines people’s news use and engagement behaviors and news credibility. Focusing on the four behaviors of news use, i.e., viewing news by keyword search, viewing news from subscribed sources, viewing news from the list of most-viewed news, and reading comments, and the three behaviors of news engagement, i.e., sharing news, ‘liking’ or ‘recommending’ news, and posting comments, this study investigates the relation between each of the behaviors and portal news credibility. Research design, data and methodology: From 2022 News Audience Survey in Korea, this study conducts a regression analysis to investigate the relations between each behavior and news credibility. Results: The results show a positive relation for the former two news use behaviors and the latter two news engagement behaviors, and a negative relation for the latter two news use behaviors. Conclusions: The positive relations between active news use and engagement behaviors and portal news credibility indicate that news consumers are more likely to use and engage in attitude-consistent news rather than attitude-challenging news, implying that heterogeneous news is less likely to be consumed and distributed evenly on portals across all news users.