For the study, 63 college students were asked to follow the Twitter accounts of either a physician with many followers, the same physician with a few followers, a layperson with many followers or a layperson with a few followers. The subjects received Twitter messages that were controversial statements about weight loss that were tweeted to them over a one-week period.
The researchers found original tweets from a physician with a large Twitter following to be the most credible. Credibility also increased when a popular layperson retweeted the same message from a physician. However, the perceived credibility decreased when that physician retweeted a message from another physician.
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