Credibility and Viewership of Pakistani Mass Media in Digital Age
Abstract
journalists after gate keeping but with the emergence of social media information reaches to the public with in a second
of incident happening without any scrutiny. Due to the easy availability of different social media platforms the persons
who were the consumers of media now became the content creators of media. The flood of information produced by
social media and mainstream media lefts doubts in the minds of consumers among the validity of information and the
credibility of platforms. The researcher has designed this study to check the credibility of social and electronic media in
the Pakistan in new age. For this purpose, the researcher designed a questionnaire for data collection to check the
perception of public about social and electronic media credibility and adopted purposive sampling to collect the data from
residents of capital cities of all 4 provinces (Lahore, Karachi, Quetta & Peshawar) of Pakistan. The researcher has applied
uses and gratification and source credibility theory as a theoretical framework. The results of the study revealed that
credibility and viewership of electronic media is decreased due to the popularity of social media. The researcher also
found that public counter check social media information on electronic media. The researcher also came to know that
official sources considered more credible than the anonymous sources. On the basis of gathered data the researcher also
came to the conclusion that content attributes increased the level of credibility in electronic and social media.
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