Today, I am thinking of how and why others may view someone as believable or credible. In my research on online reviews for a PhD course (my first signature assignment), I looked at what would lead others to believe the information in an online review. The literature indicated that argument quality, whether the review was one-sided or two-sided (probably the perceived motivation for the review), review consistency, expertise of the reviewer, and so on impacted the credibility of a review.

Looking at expertise —

It makes sense that the expertise of the reviewer determines how credible a review is viewed. If a person speaks intelligently about a topic, that person would be viewed as knowledgeable and therefore authentic and credible. Everyone wants to be the expert of a particular topic or present a unique idea.

In social media, experts of a topic are generally influencers. These influencers are all about expertise or knowledge of a topic. There are other types of influencers – celebrities, musicians, athletes, and the like – who are not experts in an academic field, but still drive action and influence consumers to purchase products.

I found an interesting journal article (Arora, Bansal et al, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0969698919300128) that developed an Influencer Index for social media. The use of the word ‘index’ caught my attention. It made me think of indices in finance such as the Dow Jones or S&P 500. The influencer index discovers influencers on social media networks. Will this lead to something?

I guess social media is growing in importance.