Mass Communication Commons^™

Pins, Portals And Purchases: Examining The Potential For Credibility Carryover Effects On Pintrest, Olga Kharitonova

Journalism & Mass Communication Graduate Theses & Dissertations

In 2012, America's third-largest social network was still entirely a startup. As one of the fastest-growing major websites in history, Pinterest.com has quickly established itself among the ranks of Facebook, Twitter and other social media behemoths. Pinterest's placement alongside increasingly visual web design and increasing e-commerce activity supports the possibility that emotion-laden visual stimuli may be one of the driving forces behind e-commerce through channels of visual persuasion, as proposed by Barry's Perception Theory. Research regarding the highly visual nature of credibility judgments supports this, showing that credibility assessments influence e-commerce spending. Through its extraordinary success ...