Transcript Credibility and Human Information Behavior

Soo Young Rieh
School of Information
University of Michigan
Information Ethics Roundtable
Misinformation and Disinformation
April 3-4, 2009
University of Arizona, Tucson
Yale Group – Carl Hovland (1950s)
 Defined credibility as a
receiver-based construct
 Determined by audience’s
acceptance of a speaker
 Credibility = trustworthiness
and expertise
 Looking at both source
credibility (characteristics of
speakers) and message
credibility (characteristics of
messages or information)
Two key dimensions
 Trustworthiness:
Perceived goodness and
morality of the source
 Expertise: perceived
knowledge, skill, and
experience of the
source
Credibility Typology 1
 Presumed credibility
 Based on general assumptions (stereotype)
 Reputed credibility
 Endorsement from people, media, source
 Surface credibility
 From simple inspection
 Experienced credibility
 Based on first-hand experience
Tseng & Fogg (1999)
Credibility Typology 2
 Conferred credibility
 Recommended or produced by well-regarded
entities
 Tabulated credibility
 Influenced by other individual’s ratings or
recommendations
 Emergent credibility
 Arises from group and social engagement
Flanagin & Metzger (2008)
Related Concepts
 Information Quality
 Credibility of one of the chief aspects of quality
 Credibility provides one more layer of evaluation to
select items that are initially judged to be good
enough
 Cognitive Authority
 More than competence and trustworthiness
 Influence other people’s thoughts individually
 Trust
 Reliability, dependability, confidence in a person,
object, or process
Rieh & Danielson (2007)
What is Human Information Behavior?
 Human information behavior
 How do people recognize information need,
seek for information and use the information
through various types of systems, services,
technology
 Totality of human behavior including both
active and passive information seeking and
information use
What is Information Seeking Behavior?
 What people do in response to goals
(intentions) which require information support
 How people seek information by interacting
with various information systems
 Information Searching Behavior
 Behavior employed by the searcher in
interacting with information systems
Nature of Credibility
 Selecting credible information during the
information seeking process is a challenge
 People make judgments of information
credibility
 Judgments and decisions are always made
internally and can be observed through choice
and its outcome
 Credibility assessments are shaped by,
embedded within, and exert an influence on
people’s information seeking process
Credibility and HIB
 Credibility assessment can be better
understood by examining information seeking
strategies with respect to goals and tasks
 Credibility assessment as a process
 Predictive Judgments
 Predictions reflecting what they can expect when
accessing information resources
 Evaluative Judgments
 They express values and preferences about
information
 Verification
My Past Credibility Research
 Credibility assessment in the process of
information seeking and Web searching
 Credibility assessment in a wide variety of
information seeking activities using diverse
sources and media
 Credibility assessment with respect to various
goals and tasks related to school, work,
health, product, hobbies, entertainment, etc.
Exploratory Study (1998)
 How do people make judgments about
information quality and authority?
 Do people apply their evaluation criteria used
in traditional information systems to those in
the Web?
Rieh & Belkin (1998). ASIST Proceedings
Major Findings from 1998 Study
 The interviewees were more or less concerned
with evaluating information quality depending
upon three factors:
 Consequences of use of information
 Act or commitment based on information
 The focus of inquiry
 Most interviewees employed “different rules”
or “different evaluation criteria” for the Web
than in traditional information systems
Experimental Study (2002)
 How do people decide which information
source(s) to look at when they make choices
among multiple sources in the Web?
 To what extent are people concerned with
quality and authority when they search in the
Web?
 What are the characteristics and factors that
influence people’s judgments about
information quality and cognitive authority?
Rieh (2002). JASIST
Major Findings from 2002 Study
 Judgment and decision making in the Web is a
continuous process
 Subjective, relative, and situational nature in
the dimensions of quality and authority
 Content as a critical factor
 Diverse ways of characterizing sources
 Institutional level of source > individual level of
source
Characteristics
of information
objects
Predictive
Judgment
Characteristics of
sources
Judgment of IQ and CA
- 5 dimensions of IQ
- 6 dimensions of CA
User’s
knowledge
Status/
discipline
Other
factors
Task
Evaluative
Judgment
Predictive
Judgment
Credibility Judgments and Everyday Life
Information Seeking Study (2008)
 How do people make credibility assessment with
respect to a variety of information activities using
diverse sources and media?
 How are people’s credibility concerns are related
to their information seeking goals?
 How do people’ credibility assessment influence
on their information seeking strategies?
Rieh & Hilligoss (2008). A chapter in Digital media, youth, and
credibility; Hilligoss & Rieh (2008). Information Processing &
Management;
Major Findings from 2008 Study
 Credibility concerns are closely related to
information seeking goals in terms of
consequences of information use
 Credibility judgments in social context
 When information obtained affects other people,
credibility concerns increase
 Participants relied on other people’s credibility
judgments
 Credibility assessment can be better understood
by looking at information seeking strategies


Starting at a trusted place
Using multiple resources and cross-referencing
Three Levels of
Credibility Assessment
 Construct: conceptualizations of credibility
 Heuristics: General rules of thumb which
are broadly applicable to a variety of
situations
 Interaction: Specific attributes associated
with particular information objects and
sources for credibility judgments
A Unifying Framework of Credibility Assessment
Context
Construct
Truthfulness, believability, trustworthiness,
objectivity, reliability
Heuristics
Media-related, source-related,
endorsement-based, aesthetics-based
Interaction
Content cues, peripheral source cues,
peripheral information object cues
Information
Influence of Each Level
 Construct
 Provides a particular point of view for judging
credibility
 Heuristics
 Provides effective ways of finding useful
information conveniently and making credibility
judgments quickly
 Interaction
 Provides characteristics of information source or
object on which a judgment can be based
 Context: Provides boundaries by
 Guiding the selection of resources
 Limiting the applicability of judgments
Key Challenges
 Complexity and continuation of Information
Seeking
 For one information seeking episode, people use
multiple media resources over time
 From information seekers to creators
 A new set of heuristics might be used as people
engage in a variety of information activities
including finding, summarizing, rating, creating,
sharing
 Encourage people to make effort for selecting and
using credible information by emphasizing the
consequences of bad judgments and decisions
based on information
Next Steps
 Credibility Assessment in the Participatory
Web Environment Project 2008-2011 funded
by the MacArthur Foundation
 Goals
 To identify new sets of constructs and heuristics
of credibility assessment have emerged in the
participatory Web environment (Web 2.0)
 To examine the relationship among online
activity, user context, motivation, confidence,
and credibility assessment
Research Questions in Progress
 To what extent people’s involvement in the
participatory Web is related to their concerns
about credibility?
 How do people assess the credibility of usergenerated content (UGC)?
 When people post UCC (user-created content)
or UMC (user-mediated content) on publicly
accessible web sites, to what extent are they
concerned about credibility?
Soo Young Rieh
School of Information
University of Michigan
[email protected]
www.si.umich.edu/rieh