Supporting Journalistic Trust Determinations: A Heuristic Analysis of News Trust Tools Through a Transparency Lens

To combat declining trust in news in the United States, numerous tools have been created to increase transparency by providing contextual information around news content, but they have largely been developed without regard for usability. We examine 59 such tools to identify the type(s) of transparency (disclosure, participatory, or ambient) information each tool aims to provide. We then conduct a heuristic usability analysis of a subset of these transparency tools and identify common usability barriers.