Comprehensive Approach to Assessing the Reliability of Information in Online Media

The article proposes a comprehensive approach to assessing the reliability of information in online media. The approach was tested on twenty Internet media texts published on the RBC and RIA Novosti news portals. The approach is based on separate ideas of media researchers about the qualitative content of media publications. It includes the following criteria: 1) explicit (external) position of the publication in the media market, e.g., professionalism of the editorial staff, discourse that surrounds the media, etc.; 2) latent (hidden) characteristics of the publication, i.e., its value system, ideology, media message, style, etc.; 3) goals and interests of the media vs. those of the audience, e.g., type of information, communicative goals, conflict between verbal and non-verbal content, accuracy, completeness, sufficiency, references, links to reliable sources, logical nomination and hypotheses development, etc. This approach proved to be objective as it is able to assess both individual texts and the whole media source.