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With the increase in citizen-generated news, the need to understand how individual predispositions interact with news sources to influence perceptions of news credibility becomes increasingly important. Using a web-based experiment, this study examines the influences individual predispositions toward the media and politics have on perceived credibility of mainstream and citizen journalism. Analyzing data drawn from a representative sample of the U.S. adult population, results indicate that media skepticism and political cynicism interact, such that cynics and skeptics perceive citizen journalism as more credible, while non-cynics and non-skeptics think mainstream journalism is more credible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using time series analysis to gauge intermedia agenda setting in a sample of eighteen U.S. political blogs, two elite traditional news entities, and their eleven political newsroom blogs across three issues in 2007, this study reveals that traditional media were unable to set political blog agendas. Ideologically diverse political blog networks were also able to set traditional media's online news agenda, and, to a lesser extent, their newsroom blog agenda. Findings point to a dilution of traditional media's singular agenda-setting influence and to greater interdependence between traditional media and political blogs than suggested by hyperlink studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]