Images of newsworthy events that appear on news websites and on social media have the same level of credibility in the public's view.
(…)
McDermott and co-authors Tara Marie Mortensen and Robert A. Wertz of the University of South Carolina documented that professionally authored images and images by amateur photographers were assessed in a survey with nearly identical levels of credibility, both on news websites and on Instagram. This was true even though respondents rated professional images higher in terms of authority and visual composition.
"People notice when a picture is professional, but they don't seem to care," McDermott, a former photojournalist, says. [Phys.org]

🔗 https://phys.org/news/2024-03-mainstream-news-outlets-monopoly-credibility.html

This study examines how the professionalism of a photograph’s authorship and presentational context influence the perceived credibility of the image using a two (photographer; staff or amateur) by two (image presentational context; news site or social media) quasi experiment. The small difference in how respondents rate the credibility of the images suggests that, broadly, participants in this study are willing to accept newsworthy images as credible on social media, and social media images as credible in the news. [Sage Journals/Social Media + Society]

🔗 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051241229656

#journalism #visualjournalism #photography #images #socialmedia #citizenjournalism #news #photographers