Abstract:
With the introduction of Web 2.0, online blogging has established its place in the lexicon of public
relations management. Especially blogs that offer reviews of products, services and technologies, have
become essential to practitioners of public relations in their dialogue with the market place. From a
public relations perspective, this paper addresses the source trustworthiness of product review blogs
among online consumers, and whether consumer demographics have a significant impact on their level
of trust. This paper reports the adaptation of a scale to measure the construct of source
trustworthiness in the context of blogs. The results of a survey among 169 Australian online consumers
confirmed the validity of the scale in the blogging context. Findings suggest that while source
trustworthiness does not appear to be strongly related to either gender or level of education, younger
consumers exhibit higher levels of source trustworthiness. Managerial implications are drawn from
these findings and avenues for future research are identified.
