Internet Credibility and the User: Building on the April Symposium

1
Internet Credibility and the UserBuilding on
the April Symposium

• Looking Back and Looking Forward

2
Conclusions Directions for Future Work

• Conceptualizations
• Research Agenda
• Tools Development and Testing

3
Conceptualizations Problem Definition

• Define credibility according to
• Level
• Need
• Interest
• Environment
• Determine
• Scope of the problem
• Assumptions
• Terminology
• The role of libraries and other institutions
• Provide policy guidelines

4
Conceptualizations Publications

• White paper
• Define credibility
• Problem definition
• Discussion of tools
• Examination of 1st Amendment issues
• Handbook
• Policy Guidelines
• K-20
• Libraries
• Web publishers and content providers
• ??
• Research publication
• State of the field?
• After next round of research efforts?

5
Research Agenda

• Assessment of existing practice
• User studies

6
Research Agenda Assessment of Existing Practice

• Literacy standards
• Existing literature and research
• Potential harm and benefits of credibility
• Methodologies how to learn or teach skills

7
Research Agenda User Studies

• Motivation, users, and credibility. Do users
  perceive credibility as a problem?
• So what? Is credibility a problem? (implications
  of credibility for the user)
• What do users want to support credibility?
• User networksrelationship to and effectiveness
  in determining credibility.
• Young users credibility at different
  developmental levels.

8
Research Agenda User Studies

• Strategies and techniques. How do users
  determine credibility?
• What criteria do users apply (internal model
  verification)?
• What triggers awareness? How do we promote a
  healthy skepticism?
• How effective and efficient are people at
  determining credibility in different situations?

9
Tools Development Testing

• Systems tools
• User tools

10
Tools Development TestingGeneral Guidelines

• Should.
• Bridge research and practice
• Unobtrusively support learning and evaluation
• Support existing practice
• Build on existing systems (e.g., Google,
  libraries)
• Design for the margins
• Be controlled by the user
• Be transparent open source
• Be easier to use than not to use.

11
Tools Development TestingSystem Tools - Ideas

• Prescreened lists of sites (e.g., Loogle
  Subset of library selected websites)
• Annotations peer, expert, user
• Audit trail (e.g., Wikis include an audit trail
  of annotations)
• Build checklist or rating into the browser or
  search engine
• Reputation systems
• Bind the source to information identity and
  relationships

12
Tools Development TestingUser Tools - Ideas

• Guides and handbooks
• Teaching guide
• Video tapes
• Teaching modules
• Quick tips
• Checklist
• Card or bookmark
• Policy implementation
• Guidelines and tools for content providers and
  systems developers

13
Additional directions

• Alliance building (e.g., Ken Kay, 21st C
  Partnerships)
• PR campaign - raising awareness
• Education programs

14
Further Discussion?
15
How we got thereSelected points by attendees
16
Miriam Metzger Conceptual Overview

• Five common criteria
• Accuracy
• Authority
• Currency
• Coverage
• Objectivity
• Problem is that people dont use them!

17
Miriam Metzger Conceptual Overview

• Credibility (Hovland et al)
• Is in the eyes of the audience/receiver of the
  information
• Believability is made up of 2 primary dimensions
• Trustworthiness
• Expertise
• There are fewer gatekeepers who regulate
  information

18
Miriam Metzger Conceptual Overview

• There is no universal determination of what is
  credible. How do we describe something with so
  much variability?
• Measure credibility
• Medium
• Forms of communication
• Entire site design
• Information messages on the site
• Sponsor/operator
• Author of the site
• gatekeepers who regulate information

19
Miriam Metzger Conceptual Overview

• Types of online credibility can be measured at
  different levels
• Surface
• Presumed credibility
• Reputed credibility
• Earned credibility
• Elements of web credibility
• Site features
• Information on the site
• Author features
• Users

20
Miriam Metzger Institutions

• Schools
• libraries
• commercial organizations
• massmedia
• news (pr releases
• Search engines
• government
• online communities
• healthcare systems, organizations
• museums
• websites for parents
• families
• social service institutions.

21
Mary Ann Fitzgerald

• Motivation and goals of the user
• Critical thinking skills teach criteria about
  whats authoritative
• Users have the power to choose their own criteria
  and strategies.
• Direct connection of critical thinking and
  library skills to Internet credibility skills

22
Elspeth Revere

• Public school cultures do not encourage debate
  and confrontation.
• Re Google committed to figuring out what users
  want and giving it to them!

23
Delia Neuman

• For years, people have judged books by their
  covers and civilization has not collapsed.
• We need to ask to whom, for what purpose, in
  what context and in what degree, what beliefs,
  perceptions, and characteristics of users.
• Must be user-focused.

24
Carolyn Brodie and Greg Byerly

• Self-service, Self-sufficiency, satisfaction,
  seamless.
• User expectation to get everything with one
  search.
• Important to look at Google why is it so
  successful and important? Implications for
  credibility.

25
Susan Curzon

• 7 teaching challenges
• Developing the educational strategy aligning
  information literacy with critical thinking.
• Tie to standards and tests. ICT. Taking
  information literacy to different disciplines.
• Teaching the teachers teacher education
  programs.
• Accreditation support info lit as part of.
• Info literacy is more than computer literacy
• Determine cost-benefit analysis.
• Increase librarian and classroom teacher
  collaboration.

26
Kristen Eschenfelder

• Institutions
• Implications for all types of institutions
  regulative, normative, cultural-cognitive
• Look at context.
• Focus mostly on the individual. What about the
  role of the group?
• Relationships over time? A process model?
• How is the Internet different?
• The value of balancing exposing things and not
  exposing things.
• Open source facilitates transparency.

27
Nancy Willow

• Focus on assessment tools
• Lack of communication across groups systems
  engineers, librarians, curriculum people
• National Education Technology Plan aimed at
  companies. One way to influence commercially
  produced products.
• MAJOR concern about filtering.

28
Batya Friedman

• Digital information is different.
• And, its not just about the Internet ubiquitous
  computing.
• Information is valuable malleable tailorable
  interacts with the user.

29
Batya Friedman

• Value sensitive design puts values into
  technology.
• 3 part methodology
• Conceptual investigations (what do we mean by
  credibility?)
• Empirical investigations (about social law and
  regulations)
• Systems (what do we do technologically?)

30
Batya Friedman

• Design for the margins
• Whose credibility cue is it?
• Can we validate multiple credibilities?
• Think about plurality.
• Think about design for flexibility.

31
Jonathan Lazar

• 3 categories of info
• 11, 1many, manymany
• Credibility tools on email flag suspicious
  links, filters (whitelist), linguistic parsers
• Name recognition
• Seals
• Privacy policies

32
Jonathan Lazar

• Tools arent the only answer but can help a lot
  of people and need to go for that group (even
  if only 40)
• Pop-up based on user feedback. Gives a
  credibility rating.
• Prescreened list of sites (e.g., librarians
  index)
• Reputation or recommender systems.
• Collaborative filtering.
• Online communities that monitor credibility of
  the members.
• Cards, e.g., Web Accessibility Foundation

33
Dave Lankes

• Whats the problem? Is there even a credibility
  problem?
• Did we move from a time when all information was
  credibility to all info is suspect?
• Its not the wild wild west anymore.
• Differences from past media
• Increased ability for self service
• Making you part of the system
• Nature of peer tools w/o central authority
• New obligation or Faustian burden
• Self service leads to greater obligation for
  literacy of all types
• In a self service/self selection world, all
  authority becomes advisory. All credibility
  situational.

34
Dave Lankes

• Many to many doesnt make sense in the user
  context.
• Tools
• Awareness
• Encryption
• Identity management
• Medical information
• Annotations
• Audit trail
• Bias
• Is situational take the concept of bias out of
  the conversation.
• Bias is one of the reasons people talk about
  credibility but information IS biased and needs
  to be.

35
Stuart Sutton

• Identity and relationships
• Can build a web of trust coming out of what we
  do know
• Emerging semantic relationships.
• Annotation layered on community assessment, but
  the end user will walk the last mile.
• Dont need to get to the code level to be
  transparent. Standards is required.
• Tools dont have to be sophisticated.

36
Stuart Sutton

• Identity and relationships
• Can build a web of trust coming out of what we
  do know
• Emerging semantic relationships.
• Annotation layered on community assessment, but
  the end user will walk the last mile.
• Internet2 added people, places, and things
  semantically. Can use this if we can determine
  credibility semantically.
• Inverse relationship bet. credibility and
  privacy. ?

37
Mike Eisenberg

• Harvest all the websites that libraries collect
  and create a search.
• We trust libraries.
• We need education to raise awareness, tools, and
  policy.
• Need an unobtrusive tool that runs in the
  background and doesnt stop you and is built on
  identity and relationships

38
Eliza Dresang

• The International Childrens Digital Library is a
  showcase of users research.

39
Louis Fox

• Is this really a big problem?
• Is there research on informal information
  networks.
• Through interaction, knowledge is being created.
• Danger of filtering. 40/70 schools have
  filtering that filters everything with .edu!

40
Debra Tatar

• Concerned about forced into a worldview of just
  accurate or inaccurate information. Need more
  models.

41
Jackie Burkell

• The key to teaching learned skepticism is to
  think about it at different levels.
• How do we get to the specific issues.
• We need to ask different questions for different
  electronic sources.
• Problem with seals not credibility, just that
  sites have a policy.