The Effect of Graphical Versus Textual Display of Information Online on the Perception of Credibility

In today\u27s society much of the information that spreads comes from online sources, such as news or social media platforms. In such sources the information inside can be difficult to understand, which can be the result of different formats of information including graphs, videos, or text. The purpose of this study was to better understand how the format of information changes the understanding of high school students about various topics. The second purpose of this study was to figure out if high school students are able to predict if a source is credible by looking at information in different formats. It was hypothesized that high school students would be able to tell the difference between untrustworthy sources and trustworthy sources. This is because most high school students have enough common sense to know if something is fake. A likely outcome of this experiment is that graphs would be easier to understand compared to other formats. Using a google form as the base, three surveys, which included graphs, texts, and videos, were created and sent to the three groups. The results showed that there was not enough evidence to support a difference in the perception of credibility based on the format of information X2 (1, N =41 ) = 1.377, p = .502338. In addition, the different formats of how information was presented did change the students\u27 understanding of the information X2 (1, N =41 ) = 7.0916, p = .028846. These results indicate that students most easily understand information presented in a video format