The effect of news labels on perceived credibility

Two online experiments examined whether news labels attract reader attention and affect news story credibility. Both studies showed that labels garner little attention from newsreaders and do not influence perceptions of news story credibility. However, Study 2 demonstrated that a label that explained the type of news story produced better recall of labels and more accurate recommendations of what the label should be. Findings suggest that if labels act as cognitive heuristics, they are weak ones.