THE CREDIBILITY OF NEWS PORTAL IN INDONESIA : AN EXPLORATORY STUDY
Sherly Haristya, Hersinta, Fiona Suwana, Indrati Kurniana
Abstract
In journal publications and academic references shown that instead of defining what makes news appealing, what is widely researched is how a media is perceived and measured as credible compare to other media. Using similar approaches, this paper is exploring whether credibility also takes place in Indonesia particularly relating to the unresolved issues on media online (such as timeliness, interactivity, accuracy, privacy) or traditional publication on the Internet within Indonesian press system.
This survey can be considered as a continuation from previous research on the searching of information seeking activity in consuming online news by digital native users. It is also as part of an effort to enrich the quality media and journalism studies conducted in other countries considering the nature of the Internet that can across borders and cover globally.
By using similar approach about the concept of credibility from Gaziano and McGrath (Rubin, 2004), the result of this survey shows consistency with our proposal that: (1) there is credibility issues on news portal or media online in Indonesia media credibility, (2) perception of some dimension of credibility from Indonesia digital native users is different from other group of user. There are two dimensions which has highest score than other dimensions, which could lead to further research, in order to find out the consistency whether these two dimensions were representing the online news’ credibility in Indonesia. Further research also will be needed to explore whether media literacy of the Internet users were affecting their perspectives on online news’ credibility.
Keywords: credibility, news portal