This dissertation is a study of how various German narratives from the nineteenth century to the present tell stories that are interrupted or framed by discourse on storytelling itself. More specifically, I examine the various means by which authors in different periods have sought to address and undermine the idea that a story must be believable. The classic frame narrative is one example of how the problem of credibility has been confronted, and yet I suggest that frames are often employed by authors for the very reason that contrary to their perceived function, they are inherently unstable. Frame narratives, interwoven stories, unbelievable occurrences, or less than credible storytellers are all ways by which the texts examined here reflect on their own production and create ambiguity about levels of reality and the connections between different story levels.

In online shopping buyers do not have enough information about sellers and cannot inspect the products before purchasing them. To help buyers find reliable sellers, online marketplaces deploy Trust and Reputation Management (TRM) systems. These systems aggregate buyers’ feedback about the sellers they have interacted with and about the products they have purchased, to inform users within the marketplace about the sellers and products before making purchases. Thus positive customer feedback has become a valuable asset for each seller in order to attract more business. This naturally creates incentives for cheating, in terms of introducing fake positive feedback. Therefore, an important responsibility of TRM systems is to aid buyers find genuine feedback (reviews) about different sellers. Recent TRM systems achieve this goal by selecting and assigning credible advisers to any new customer/buyer. These advisers are selected among the buyers who have had experience with a number of sellers and have provided feedback for their services and goods. As people differ in their tastes, the buyer feedback that would be most useful should come from advisers with similar tastes and values. In addition, the advisers should be honest, i.e. provide truthful reviews and ratings, and not malicious, i.e. not collude with sellers to favour them or with other buyers to badmouth some sellers. Defining the boundary between dishonest and honest advisers is very important. However, currently, there is no systematic approach for setting the honesty threshold which divides benevolent advisers from the malicious ones. The thesis addresses this problem and proposes a market-adaptive honesty threshold management mechanism. In this mechanism the TRM system forms a feedback system which monitors the current status of the e-marketplace. According to the status of the e-marketplace the feedback system improves the performance utilizing PID controller from the field of control systems. The responsibility of this controller is to set the the suitable value of honesty threshold. The results of experiments, using simulation and real-world dataset show that the market-adaptive honesty threshold allows to optimize the performance of the marketplace with respect to throughput and buyer satisfaction.

Sustainable actions in the footwear industry are growing in importance and sustainability communication has an important role for a changed shoe industry. The sustainability communication must be clear, credible and comparable as well as accessible in order to be communicated successfully.

Zugl.: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2010

This study examines the construction of credibility in a rape conviction from 2013 in Swedish courts of law by the district court and the higher regional court. The study use discourse analysis with a focus on identity, and gender and honour as analytical concepts to analyse the concept of credibility. The results show that the concept of credibility is not constant throughout the courts and neither are the identities. In this case it may be due to the district court´s judgement in a general credibility and weighed in only the plaintiffs Romanian ethnicity and not the defendant’s Iranian ethnicity, while the higher regional court on the other hand judged a more specific credibility, looked at the facts and ruled out ethnicity. In the latter court the defendant was found guilty. The study also shows that when the courts interpret the parties from a modern context they miss alternative explanations for their behaviour regarding values of clannism in a pre-modern context. They missed alternative ways to interpret the parties as a trustworthy victim and a possible offender respectively. A result from this study is the suggestion that the most reliable credibility assessment is to interpret the parties from their own context.

Tales of unethical reporting, conflict of interest, biases and corruption characterize media practice in Zambia today. The advent of technology and the mushrooming of media houses have ironically magnified this trend. Such tendencies have compromised ethical reporting, thus undermining the journalistic credibility. While some scholars call for a return to African ethics, others hanker for greater professionalism. This study offers an overview of the media in Zambia with Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation and the POST newspaper as its case study. The study looks at how virtue ethics would be effective in reclaiming media credibility. Using qualitative methods, data were collected via theoretical and methodological triangulation. Open-ended questions were designed and distributed among 10 Zambian journalists. The interviews were conducted within a period of one month. Findings indicated that media credibility in Zambia has reached unprecedented levels of suspicion and that virtue ethics, if well applied, would redeem the lost credibility.

In the context of developing effective PSAs to help increase the number of young adults who quit smoking or don’t start, this study took cultural orientation into account and assessed the persuasive effect of high and low source credibility. This present study showed that, in terms of attitude toward the ad message, people who were exposed to a commercial brand actually had a more positive attitude than those who saw the video that had CCTV as its producer. However, no significant differences were found in the other four constructs, including attitude toward antismoking, smoking-related social norms and subjective norms, smoking-related anticipated regret and intentions to quit or not start smoking.

Ao longo dos anos 90, o Brasil passou por um processo de reestruturação na organização de seu setor de infra-estrutura nacional. Por meio desse processo, o Estado brasileiro passou às mãos de concessionárias privadas o controle acionário de suas principais empresas estatais, bem como o controle de rodovias e alguns serviços de utilidade pública. Para organizar a dinâmica econômica derivada da entrada desses novos agentes, foram constituídas agências reguladoras que teriam o papel de estabelecer e aplicar regras claras, as quais propiciariam uma alocação de riqueza adequada entre fornecedores e consumidores de forma a manter o incentivo ao investimento sem onerar demasiadamente os consumidores. Investimentos que o estado brasileiro não teria mais a capacidade de realizar na quantidade demandada por tais setores. Dentro desse contexto, questiona-se a credibilidade dessas agências, pois não se sabe até que ponto elas detêm um respaldo político e legal para tomarem as decisões que venham a considerar necessárias, propiciando assim um ambiente adequado para a realização de investimentos de longo prazo de maturação. Essa incerteza tende a gerar reflexos sobre os investidores do setor, que podem aumentar a hesitação em realizar investimentos, o que vem provocando conseqüências sérias para a economia brasileira e para a expansão e modernização da infra-estrutura nacional. Essa hesitação pode ser sentida nos diferentes níveis de investimento e cada setor específico.

Ao longo dos anos 90, o Brasil passou por um processo de reestruturação na organização de seu setor de infra-estrutura nacional. Por meio desse processo, o Estado brasileiro passou às mãos de concessionárias privadas o controle acionário de suas principais empresas estatais, bem como o controle de rodovias e alguns serviços de utilidade pública. Para organizar a dinâmica econômica derivada da entrada desses novos agentes, foram constituídas agências reguladoras que teriam o papel de estabelecer e aplicar regras claras, as quais propiciariam uma alocação de riqueza adequada entre fornecedores e consumidores de forma a manter o incentivo ao investimento sem onerar demasiadamente os consumidores. Investimentos que o estado brasileiro não teria mais a capacidade de realizar na quantidade demandada por tais setores. Dentro desse contexto, questiona-se a credibilidade dessas agências, pois não se sabe até que ponto elas detêm um respaldo político e legal para tomarem as decisões que venham a considerar necessárias, propiciando assim um ambiente adequado para a realização de investimentos de longo prazo de maturação. Essa incerteza tende a gerar reflexos sobre os investidores do setor, que podem aumentar a hesitação em realizar investimentos, o que vem provocando conseqüências sérias para a economia brasileira e para a expansão e modernização da infra-estrutura nacional. Essa hesitação pode ser sentida nos diferentes níveis de investimento e cada setor específico.

The goal of our thesis was to study the relation between trust and media. Therefore, we have introduced some selected theoretical approaches of trust in relation to society and we have also formulated our own theoretical implications on the basis of this review which we have later used in our research of trust in media. In the theoretical part we have defined the concept of trust in terms of two key principals of trust based on the rational and intuitive understanding of trust. We have described hierarchical levels of trust in society and then we have focused on interpersonal and system level. We have reviewed selected theoretical approaches to trust and we have outlined the development of trust within sociology. We have explained the function of media in society and pointed out the reasons of the interest in studying trust in media together with the review of the concepts of media effects. Then we have briefly summarized the empirical research and mentioned the situation in the Czech Republic. Finally we have suggested some phenomenons that may cause the decrease in trust are named. In the research part we have concerned with the analysis between media source popularity operetionalised as a frequency of using of the media source and its credibility perceived by recipients. Another research goal...